Subject: VAMPIRE DETECTIVES edited by Martin H. Greenberg

From: "Evelyn C Leeper" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 May 1995 23:42:46 GMT

VAMPIRE DETECTIVES by Martin H. Greenberg
             DAW, ISBN 0-88677-626-0, 1995, 316pp, US$4.99
                   A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
		    Copyright 1995 Evelyn C. Leeper

     How, one might ask, can you have nineteen stories about vampire
detectives without having them get a bit repetitious?  The answer is that
you can't and so what you have here are nineteen stories, SOME of which are
about vampire detectives and some of which are about regular detectives
hunting vampires.  (Well, I suppose the English language allows the latter
to be called "vampire detectives," much as Ace Ventura was a "pet
detective."  Still, this is a little like having an anthology called NURSE
STORIES which is half stories about nurses and half stories about
bull-fighting written by nurses.)  For that matter, a couple are not about
detectives or detection at all.

     Reading these, I have to say that perhaps the specialized anthology has
gotten too specialized.  Or perhaps Greenberg really does need a co-editor
to oversee the artistic end of things.  (Okay, so some may quibble about the
juxtaposition of the word "artistic" and the concept "vampire detectives.")
But I found these stories basically boring, and this time I cannot attribute
that to having read too many at one sitting, since I spread this out over a
couple of weeks.

     Not surprisingly, the best of the batch is Kathe Koja and Barry N.
Malzberg's "Girl's Night Out."  I hope someone publishes a collection of
Malzberg's recent short fiction, much of which has been scattered around in
anthologies of wildly varying quality.  A few, notably William Sanders's
"The Count's Mailbox" and Gary Alan Ruse's "Night Tidings," are extremely
derivative.  (I can't believe that Ruse used such an obvious gimmick from
Conan Doyle.)  But even the rest are pretty much your basic modern vampire
story, with maybe one twist here or one unusual updating there, but on the
whole uninteresting.  Maybe dyed-in-the-wool (died-in-the-blood?) vampire
fans might like them, but the average reader can safely give this collection
a miss.

%B      Vampire Detectives
%E      Martin H. Greenberg
%C      New York
%D      April 1995
%I      DAW
%O      paperback, US$4.99
%G      ISBN 0-88677-626-0
%P      316pp

-- 
Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | [email-masked]
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