Product Description

This is bestselling author John Steakley's vampire classic: Vampires infest the modern world and a group of brave people-professional vampire killers-devote their lives to hunting them down.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #649301 in Books
• Published on: 1992-05-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Amazon.com Review
Vampire$ (the title does end with a dollar sign) is about a tightly knit group of professional vampire killers. They may say they're in it for the money, but their death-defying bravado and warm male friendships are as intense as those in any soldier-hero epic. The irrepressible, foul-mouthed, hard-drinkin' Jack Crow--decked out in high-tech chain mail and wielding a fearsome crossbow--is the leader of the bunch. He's the sort of man who screams obscenities at the pope, and then (after a lot of booze) weeps in the pontiff's lap over the horrors he's witnessed.

Author John Steakley is the son of a Chevrolet dealer from Cleburne, Texas, and he uses his roots to good effect. Not only does much of the action take place in the Lone Star state, but when we first meet the major character named Felix, he's an apparition out of the Old West--living in an abandoned boxcar on the Rio Grande with a Mexican whore, an endless supply of tequila, and a tacky bleeding Jesus on the wall.

Vampire$ is one gaudy, action-packed novel. The men are men, the women are vulnerable, and the vampires are mean, ugly monsters. Unless you don't like that sort of thing, you'll love it.

Review
Gives a closer, longer look at violent vampire-hunting than anything else to date, often at a breath-taking pace. -- The Vampire's Closet

About the Author
John Steakley is also the author of Armor.

Customer Reviews

Next to the original "Dracula", the best one I've ever read
I read a lot of horror books, many of which deal with vampires. About one in ten is good (an unfortunate low number), and about one in a hundred is great. This one is. The other two (concerning vampires) that springs to mind are Carrion Comfort (a novel approach by Dan Simmons) and the original Dracula (and yes, Bram Stoker's film sucks). Anne Rice, well, that's for the kiddies and supermarket crowd.

Steakley manages to make the vampire a completely believable "thing" without any mumbo-jumbo "flying around in the night" stuff. That makes it a scary book (which is why we read horrror in the first place, yes?). The pace is just right, the cast is great and the story's premise is stupendously brilliant. It is actually hard to pinpoint any specific reason, but this is a GREAT book. I've even reread it several times (I've had it for close to ten years, and NOW I am writing a review, that should say something), and it is a great read even the second (or third) time around.

Steakley is one of the authors I run through Amazon's search engine every now and then, hope shining in my eyes. Sadly, only the two same hits ever come up (the other is "Armor", an awesome 5-star sci-fi story I also fully recommend).

Please don't blame the book for the movie...
I mean that. "John Carpenter's Vampires" was a decent movie, if a bit trite (a black cross? reverse exorcism? please...), but this book is anything but trite. It is vulgar, edgy, dark, and very very good. Forget the limp-wristed characters Anne Rice writes about. Steakley's vampires are a monsterous lot, full of violence and horror. Brian Lumley's books are a much closer comparison, and that is high praise in deed (for me, anyway). It doesn't hurt that I grew up not ten miles from Cleburne, Texas, and it was a kick in the pants when I saw the city represented in the book (it's a small, dusty, Texas town without much of note), not to mention the fact that John is from there. On a side note, his dad's dealership has moved to Fort Worth, I believe.

Anyway, before I digress further, go buy this book! It was action aplenty, characters that just grab you by the lapels and shake you, and a story that never tires no matter how many times I read it. This is a first class American vampire novel. Forget about Rice. THIS is was a vampire book *should* be.

Interesting take on the mythology of Vampire$
After being shaken to my very core by "Armor", I ran to the book store to find anything by John Steakly. At the third one I finally found Vampire$. While not nearly as intense or gripping, this book merits reading. Incidentally, the movie unforgivably omits the character Felix. Anyone who knows Steakly's work intimately couldn't do such a thing. The idea of vampire hunters for hire is a novel one and Jack Crow comes off like Abraham Van Helsing in a steroid rage. The role of Felix was made for Gary Oldman, an emotionally crippled killer with a dead on shot. I liked the idea that these guys listen to SRV. The dialogue is stardard Steakly; Hemingway influenced, stream of consciousness banter that is very real sounding. Kind of like sitting in an empty bar in the afternoon, smoking cigarettes and drinking beer, listening to a great storyteller spin a yarn you half believe and half don't want to. Besides the names of the main characters, another thread tying Steakly's books together is the emotion he conveys in his writing. The emotional level in his books reaches high levels, you really feel for the characters, even if you don't like them. I definitely recommend this book if you like vampire stories, and who does'nt. While not as fully fleshed out as the very gothic works of Anne Rice or Brian Lumley's British Necroscope, the American twist on the vampire theme is interesting. In a way, this is the definitive American vampire story. And whether you liked Vampire$ or not, for God's sake read "Armor". Long live Felix.