Reformed Vampire Support Group by Catherine Jinks

[modernwizard]

Stuck at age 15 since 1973, Sydneyite Nina Harrison has no special powers as a vampire. In fact, she and her fellow support group members are weak, sickly individuals with extreme photosensitivity and an unfortunate propensity to drop dead from sunrise to sunset. They do not seduce, swoop or loom; instead they dither and bicker among themselves, activities that come to an end only when one of them is murdered. Only then do our crochety invalids come alive as they try to solve a murder mystery without involving themselves in violence or blood. Awkwardness results as the characters flail about, much in the way that real people might if they realized they were in a storybook whodunit. While the vampiric whininess gets tedious, Catherine Jinks compensates with non-stop action and plenty of twists and turns, all the while remaining true to her vision of vampirism as a combination of addiction and disability. Though Jinks does not have a sharp enough flair in her writing to pull off a biting satire [instead, it nips occasionally], her relentlessly realistic depiction of average people trying to be superheroic is consistently appealing.