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INVOKER
by Jon F. Merz
Pinnacle, October 2002
351 pages
$5.99
ISBN: 0786015012


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Vampires apparently have been rehabilitated and no longer must wait on the Group W bench. We have a Southern Cozy Gay Vampire in English Village as in Dean James series; highly erotic romantic suspense horror vampires as in the Anita Blake series by Laurell K. Hamilton; medium boiled vampires, shapeshifters and human telepaths as in Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse series; police procedural vampires as in Lee Killough's books, and, of course, the classic horror vampire which is the ancestor of them all as depicted by Bram Stoker in DRACULA. Now we have a hard boiled PI vampire. Lawson, the FIXER, who tries to keep the balance between humans and vampires, which evolved in a parallel line with humans but are unknown to most human beings.

A fixer is a vampire killer who is also a vampire. If a rogue gets out into the general populace and starts indiscriminate killing, the FIXER must go in and restore the balance. Most fixers operate a Control who screens the problems as they arise and send the fixer on his mission. Lawson is operating without a control when he is told to go to a junkyard and kill Watterson who is dealing drugs. Lawson does so but Watterson's dying words, asking Lawson to protect his son, make Lawson pause. A promise is a promise and Lawson gets to Jack before the bad guys are able to kidnap him. It turns out the Jack is a very powerful, untained INVOKER, and one of the members of the council, the ruling body of the vampires, has turned and wants Jack for her nefarious purposes.

Lawson has to go to Congress Street, in the old downtown section of Boston to consult with his computer guru. Here's his take on the big dig

The Big Dig, Boston's bogus construction project that seemed to be taking longer than a walk to Pluto and had more cost overruns and corrupt officials than ants at a picnic in July, had scarred the waterfront section of town. Where once there were roads, now lived detours, dead ends, and the ubiquitous presence of cops on overtime. Trying to thread tour way around down there took a lot of time and a lot of patience.

Boston drivers usually possessed neither.

Lawson has no one he can trust except for a retired elder, Wirek, who lives in alcoholic squalor. Wirek cleans up his act and starts training Jack to use his abilities. The school for Invokers, in Tibet, has long been closed, but when Jack is kidnapped, Lawson and Wirek go to save him.

The first book in this series THE FIXER, is out of print. Run out and buy this one before it too goes out of print. It's a keeper.

Reviewed by Barbara Franchi, April 2003

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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