Samson’s Lovely Mortal (Scanguards Vampires #1) by  Tina Folsom

Review by Cynthia F. (frazerc)

You don’t meet a lot of heroes with erectile dysfunction…  Samson should be a happy vampire: he’s got close friends, a skillion dollars, and a successful company. But he still seems to being striking out on the ‘life, love, and pursuit of happiness’ thing. And there’s his 237th birthday coming up and his buddies are going to throw him a ‘surprise party’ complete with a stripper who does ‘extras’.  Sigh.  So he really isn’t surprised when a strange woman bangs on his door and begs for help…

Delilah barely escapes a thug who then pursues her down the deserted, rain-slicked streets of San Francisco. Seeing a lighted window she pounds on the door which is jerked open by a very large and apparently not very happy homeowner.  But he pulls her inside and offers her a place by the fire as she jerks out her story.

So, the stripper was taking the ‘damsel in distress’ approach.  Unusual but very nice.  And the rain-soaked clothes make it clear that the mortal is very nicely put together.  One kiss proves that she’s just what the doctor ordered…

OK, sexually aggressive homeowner versus street thug – not a good choice even if he was the best kisser in the world.  One high heel equipped stomp and slap later they’re glaring at each other.  Delilah thinks the night can’t get any worse and then he makes it clear he thinks she’s a stripper.

Shocked when he finds that she really was a damsel in distress and even more horrified by his own misguided behavior he apologizes profusely and offers dry clothes and a ride home with his chauffeur.  His friends confirm that it had been a case of mistaken identity [they brought the stripper with them] so she accepts.

After her departure, Samson takes the stripper upstairs planning to give his newly cured body some long denied release.  Unfortunately his body knew what it wanted and it had just walked out the door.

The story continues with a fair amount of action, both in and out of the bedroom. Samson pursues Delilah [the whole Samson and Delilah thing?  Smirk.] Past and present betrayals surface but everyone gets by with a little help from their friends.  And Samson?  Let’s just say he doesn’t need a shrink anymore.

Scanguards Vampires Series:
Book 1: Samson’s Lovely Mortal
Book 2: Amaury’s Hellion
Book 3: Gabriel’s Mate
Book 4: Yvette’s Haven [published 5/2011]

Ink Flamingos by Karen E. Olson

Review by reacherfan1909

I started reading Karen E Olson back in with her first book in the Anne Seymour series, Sacred Cows.  I sort of lost track of her work over the years and thanks to the Mystery Thriller Virtual Box group, I heard about the Tattoo Shop series.  I hesitated a bit, I cannot tell how tired I am of those cozy clones with the many cutesy hooks, but The Missing Ink got such uniformly good reviews I gave it and Pretty in Ink a try.  I was immediately hooked and the Tattoo Shop books have been on pre-order ever since.  Ink Flamingos was released June 7 – and I obviously wasted no time reading it.

Brett Kavanaugh owns The Painted Lady, a high end tattoo shop in the shopping plaza of the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas.  Like the classy setting, The Painted Lady is no ordinary tattoo shop, they do custom work only – body art.  (The stock tattoos commonly seen are called ‘flash’.) Her staff are mostly well developed characters – Bitsy, her tough as nails ‘little person’ receptionist, and Joel, the forever unsuccessfully dieting artist.  Ace, her second artist who considers tattoos rather beneath him as he sees himself as a ‘real’ artist, but needs to make a living, has never really been fleshed out as well as the other characters.

Brett shares a home owned by her older brother, Tim, a detective with the Las Vegas Police Department.  She and Tim enjoy a good relationship, except for one little problem – Brett keeps getting involved with murders.  This time it’s different. Very different.  One of Brett’s clients, a young woman, Daisy ‘Dee’ Carmichael, who became an ‘overnight’ rock sensation, has turned up dead in a Vegas hotel.  A blog has photos that implicate Brett in causing the death with a bad tattoo.  Her apparent involvement is exacerbated by a tall female in a red wig claiming to be her.  Not one, but two blogs seem to be setting her up, blaming her for Dee’s death, and trashing her reputation and business.

Brett really liked Daisy and had been doing her tattoos – all plain black due to Daisy’s allergies – since before she and her band, the Flamingos, became famous.  Between someone seemingly out to ruin her, a sense of obligation to Daisy, whom she considered more than just a customer, her own curiosity, and the blogs driving some very negative public attention her way, Brett finds herself once again, ‘meddling’ in a police investigation.  Calling on Jeff Coleman, owner of Murder, Ink, a ‘flash’ style tattoo business and her frequent cohort in her rather questionable activities, they keep finding as many questions as they do answers.

Unemployed blackjack dealer and frequent Painted Lady visitor, the good natured Harry, helps Brett out on one of her forays, then takes her for a drink – absinthe.  Photos of her and Harry kissing land on the blog the within hours.  And someone makes sure Brett’s current beau, Dr Colin Bixby, sees them.  Colin quickly becomes her ex.  Jeff tells Brett the apparently genial Harry is actually a tattoo artist he fired for incompetence and has been lying to her right along.  And it turns out Harry’s kiss is nothing compared with Jeff’s, which curls Brett’s toes like no one ever has.  And the only one socked by it is Brett – everyone at Painted Lady figured it was about time!

The plot twists are good, even if one of them was a bit trite (sorry no spoiler, so I can’t reveal more).  As a newspaper writer, Ms Olson writing style is clean and descriptive, she keeps her story on track and well paced, and makes most of her characters and colorful Las Vegas setting.  I’ve come to really like Brett, Jeff and the supporting characters, including Jeff’s eccentric elderly mother Sylvia – a delightful original.  One of the interesting parts of this series is how she draws the reader into the philosophy and mindset of those who get ‘body modification’ in the form of tattoos.  Colorful, original, and very good reading.  The one trite plot trick keeps my score for Ink Flamingos at 4.5*, B+ to A-, but it is a highly recommended read!  You don’t need to read the series in order, but I think you’ll enjoy it more if you do.

Vampire Dragon by Annette Blair

Review by Cynthia F. (frazerc)

This is a fun paranormal read with an action plot.  Third book in the Works Like Magick series and closely related to the first book Naked Dragon.

Practicing good witch Vivica has a calling, she collects the strays she calls chameleons who arrive on earth from other planes and times and helps them acclimate and find jobs.  To this end she has developed a step-by-step series of lessons which will help the individual understand the technology, language and culture of the current here-and-now.  Too bad our hero has a touch of ADD, refuses to do the lessons in order and is much more interested in returning to his new found heartmate than finding out silly stuff about laws and governments and where Canada is.

Meet Darkwyn Dragonelli – an ex-Roman soldier who spent the last dozen centuries as a dragon on the Isle of Stars – now returned to earth in the 21st century.  He arrives naked [and fortunately BEHIND the bar] of the Salem’s Bite Me pub.  The very first person he meets is a masked woman with long purple hair dressed as a vampire – and his heart says ‘mate’ while his head says ‘maybe’.  Vivica arrives – man sized cloak in hand – and escorts him out.

Bronte is the owner of the building which he materialized in – it houses Bite Me [vampire pub], Fangs for the Memories [vampire themed fun/haunted house], and Drak, a private nightclub for real vampires, LARP vampires, and the occasional wannabe.  She plays the Vampire Mistress at Drak’s and she really needs a Vampire Master to act as host, maitre d’, and bouncer.  And the now-cloaked stranger looked like he really qualified – now if she could only trust him with her real problems…

Darkwyn blows off most of the indoctrination process  – including the part where he was supposed to learn to be circumspect about his origins.  The result is his first night as Vampire Master he tells the truth to a slimy reporter/talk show host which then gets him, Bronte, and her nephew Zachary,  spread across the front pages of various newspapers under the headline ‘Vampire Dragon?’

What the book has is a great plot with fun characters.  The plot has enough twists and turns to satisfy: involving a wedding, an evil witch armed with the weather, death scenes, reincarnation and the Canadian mob.  The supporting characters are delightful. The human [well mostly human] cast includes 12-year-old Zachary who seems to know far more than he should, Vivica who keeps trying to ‘orchestrate’ things with great intentions but poor success, and Darkwyn’s two dragon brothers who preceded him into our world.  The animal [again, mostly animal] cast includes Puck the parrot who quotes Ambrose Bierce while giving advice, two winged kittens who are occasionally dangerous and sometimes just kittens, and Jaggidy an invisible, hand-sized dragon elder who came through the veil with Darkwyn  and is enamored of Bronte and her magnificent cleavage.

What the book hasn’t is vampires.  Oh, they’re there but play no major roles – they only have bit parts.  So if you’re looking for vampires, try another book.  If you’re looking for a fun, fairly fast read – Vampire Dragon has your name on it.

Can you read this book without reading Bedeviled Angel or Naked Dragon?  Yes.  There is almost no overlap between Bedeviled Angel and Vampire Dragon.  Naked Dragon gives you some additional insight into Works Like Magick and the whole Roman soldier/dragon/dragonshifter thing but Vampire Dragon gives you enough to skip it if you need to.

Works Like Magick

1. Naked Dragon (2010)

2. Bedeviled Angel (2010)

3. Vampire Dragon (2011)

Murder at the Pageant by Victor L. Whitechurch

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

In the late 1980s, Dover Publications reprinted many classics from the golden age of British mysteries.

In Murder at the Pageant, during a pageant commemorating Queen Anne’s visit to the country estate Frimley Manor  in 1705, murder and a theft of a pearl necklace happen in tandem.

The Pageant description in the opening chapter 1 attracts us with the description of clothes and the sedan chair, which later plays a part in the crimes.  The clues are presented clearly, the subplot doesn’t muddy details up.

Helping the local police of Superintendent Kinch is Capt. Roger Bristow, by no means the gifted amateur beloved in whodunits but of the Secret Service. Neither has much personality but the edgy pride the copper and his sergeant feel against the spy-catcher is well-done.

Whitechurch was accurate, vicar and canon is real life and came to writing rather later in life. His writing is more careful than graceful, with long sentences salted with an inordinate amount of commas. People tend to talk like people in a novel.

Still, this mystery is worth reading for its tight plotting and for the sake of variety. I mean, we need to read some new  old-fashioned puzzlers from between the wars, not just Sayers and Queen.

Butcher Bird: A Novel Of The Dominion by Richard Kadrey

Review by Bowden P. (Trey)

Back in 2008, I wrote a 3 line review of Butcher Bird. After reading Sandman Slim, I thought I’d revisit it – and got a pleasant surprise for my time and effort. It reads like an earlier draft of Sandman Slim. By the way, that’s a feature, not a bug. It has many mad, beautiful and weird ideas, with good descriptive prose. It also has more sympathetic characters than Sandman Slim.

As to what it’s about, the back cover blurb does a good job of setting it up and giving an overview. It should be, after all the folks that write it have more time to do so.

At its most basic level, Butcher Bird is about Spyder Lee (named for the car) an overgrown adolescent and tattoo artist finally growing up. He does this by getting infected with the truth and seeing the occult magic of the world (a beautiful and terrible experience at the best of times and Spyder’s exposure is far from ideal). He also goes on a quest… Along with Spyder, we get: Lulu, Spyder’s lesbian sister-in-spirit and business partner; Shrike (the butcher bird of the title) a former princess, now blind warrior who wanders the three spheres; Count Non, a mysterious and likable aristocratic warrior. These four then go on an epic quest.

Butcher Bird reminds me of Tim Powers, a darker version of Charles de Lint’s work or Bordertown with the characters growing up. It’s a great piece of urban fantasy. It is also a mash up of urban fantasy, the new weird and traditional quest fantasy. What makes it neat is that Kadrey doesn’t think small – he makes it universally important and personal for the characters. And the quest takes them well beyond Earth and the first sphere.

Now, I mentioned how Butcher Bird read like an earlier draft of Sandman Slim. The two books share elements and themes – Apollyon’s dagger, the Key, a living people in Hell, a human sorcerer raising Hell in Hell, terrors from the creation of the world and others. I doubt I’d have noticed the similarities if I hadn’t read the two in quick succession though. And I think the similarities are a feature, mainly because Butcher Bird is rawer and closer to the surface with its feelings.

In short I liked it. Four stars. Its evocative and has well drawn characters.

Likes: Decent (if not always sympathetic) characters; Nicely done dialogue; Sympathy for the Devil; The little myths from his work on Viper Wire; Character growth; Female characters that pass the Bechdel test; Oddly enough, Hell; Divine will vs. free will; Mad, beautiful ideas – like a city of lost things, fantastic air ships.

Dislikes: Spyder being an ass early in the book, but the character growth takes care of that; Not any sympathy for God.

Suggested for: Richard Kadrey and Sandman Slim fans; Fans of Tim Powers and Charles de Lint; Anyone who wanted a bit more out of the Bordertown series; Fans of John M. Ford’s The Last Hot Time.