Bloodshot

[sawyl]

A fun diversion in the form of Cherie Priest's Bloodshot a vampire heist novel that eschews moodiness for obsessive-compulsive tendencies, a thriller stand featuring Men in Black, and a sidekick who combines a previous career as a Navy SEAL with a current job as a highly successful drag queen.

Raylene Pendle, vampire and international thief, has spent a great deal of time covering her tracks so when she receives a hand-delivered note from a prospective client, she is understandably worried. Agreeing to meet the client — in part to discover how they found out about her — she is surprised to find herself talking to a fellow vampire who lost much of his sight in a series of military experiments a decade earlier. Intrigued, Raylene agrees to steal the documents Ian believes may hold the key to curing his condition. On the way home from the meeting, Raylene receives a phone call from one of the kids she allows to squat in the anonymous Seattle warehouse where she stashes her stuff. The girl, Pepper, has worrying news: someone has broken in.

Disturbed by two invasions of her privacy in quick succession and intrigued by Ian's case, Raylene starts digging into the history of Project Bloodshot only for her queries to snag some electronic tripwires. Pushed out of her comfort zone, she carries out a quick raid on a warehouse somewhere in the frozen depths of Minnesota where she finds a lead pointing her towards a missing vampire from Atlanta. In Georgia she picks up a lead in a local bar — Sister Rose, the Poppycock Club's favourite — only to run foul of a group of Men in Black. With the help of Sister Rose, who turns out to be very handy at dealing mayhem, Raylene digs up some old papers which turn her thoughts towards Washington DC and the offices of a retired soldier who seems to be moonlighting at his old job.

Although it may not be particularly profound, Bloodshot is a solid thriller with a likeably arch lead character. Despite being a vampire, Raylene's personality has survived largely unchanged — she notes that people don't become slavering monsters simply because they've become undead — and she has just as many hang-ups and problems as anyone else. Despite being faster and stronger and more resilient than most, she still suffers from anxiety-induced panic attacks and struggles with obsessive-compulsive tendencies that find her accumulating bits and pieces of bric-a-brac wherever she turns up.

The other characters are treated sympathetically, including Sister Rose, whose gender Raylene switches depending on the context and over whom she shamelessly leches, regardless of whether they're dragged up in a sparkly bikini and body glitter or wearing a tight shirt and night-vision goggles. The two orphans inhabiting the abandoned warehouse are convincing cases: Domino is a smart-arse with an attitude problem, but solid when he has to be; Pepper is generally adorable and, in the scene when Raylene realises that there are moments when she feels like talking to Pepper is like holding a conversation with world-weary 40 year-old, possessed of a suitable air of sadness and loss.

The thriller plot works well, with Raylene often finding herself in a tight spot that requires every bit of her superhuman speed and strength to escape from. Ironically most of these tight spots are self-induced. For all her obsessive preparedness, she has an unfortunate tendency to improvise wildly while on a mission in way that often makes things worse rather than better. To some extent this a feature of the impulsive part of her personality but it must also be a reaction to her condition: being hard to kill and long-lived, she puts herself in harms way to keep life from getting dull. And if that means the reader gets plenty of explosions, so much the better.