THE REFORMED VAMPIRE SUPPORT GROUP
Catherine Jinks
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Mystery
ISBN: 9780152066093
368 pages

If certain bestselling novels and hit movies are to be believed, vampires are passionate, glamorous, romantic and downright sexy. Not so, says Nina Harrison, the narrator of Catherine Jinks’s dark comedy, THE REFORMED VAMPIRE SUPPORT GROUP. Nina, who has been a vampire since she was “fanged” at age 15, may write her own series of bestselling novels starring sexy vampire Zadia Bloodstone. However, in real life, Nina and her group of vampire “friends” (a term Nina herself would probably reject) are anything but glamorous or desirable.

Instead, life with Nina and her companions is a lot like an AA meeting. In fact, the loose-knit group of vampires meets regularly at a church in their native Sydney, Australia, in meetings overseen by a (human) priest. (It turns out, by the way, that the whole thing about vampires despising crosses and garlic was a bit of an exaggeration.) Being a vampire, we find out, is kind of like being an alcoholic. The vampires effectively have an infection that’s impossible to cure but possible to control, mainly by using willpower to overcome their desire for human blood and by fanging small animals (in their case, guinea pigs) and taking enzymes that mimic those in human blood.

Nina still lives at home with her mother (who’s now in her 70s), and she socializes by necessity with the other reformed vampires in her group. The only one she is at all fond of is fellow teenaged vampire Dave, a sensitive but moody soul who she likes in spite of herself. Nina can take or leave the other vampires, especially Casimir, the creepy instigator of the group. But when Casimir is staked through the heart and shot with a silver bullet, the Reformed Vampire Support Group must figure out which modern-day Van Helsing was out to get him --- and which of the other vampires might be the next target.

Obviously, Nina’s dysfunctional, unattractive vampire posse of losers and creeps is meant to be a deliberate alternative to smoothly slick vampires in other novels. Jinks’s book is also a clever send-up of society’s fringe elements --- just like criminals, prostitutes and addicts, the vampires lurk around the city after dark, keeping to themselves because they might endanger (or be endangered by) others.

In addition to being a witty satire and a clever murder mystery with a most unusual set of detectives, THE REFORMED VAMPIRE SUPPORT GROUP is also very, very funny, whether you happen to be a fan of vampire novels or not: “Horace…had arrayed himself in a Gothic assortment of crushed velvet, black satin, and patent leather that shouldn’t be allowed, in my view. He might as well have had I AM A VAMPIRE embroidered across the front of his watered-silk waistcoat. An outfit like that is going to get him staked one of these days; it’s exactly what Boris Karloff would have worn, if he’d joined the cast of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” In passages like this, Nina’s snarky, spot-on narration will win her fans, even if she’s not the kind of vampire that gets all the good press.

    --- Reviewed by Norah Piehl

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