Vicki Nelson Investigations

Blood Price

A killer stalks the streets of Toronto. It kills by night; it drains its victims of blood. The papers scream vampire. But Vicki Nelson, ex-cop turned private investigator, doesn't believe in vampires. At least, not unless someone's willing to pay her to believe in them -- and it can't hurt to have one more person on the case, even if the killer turns out to be human. Somehow, though, in a fantasy novel it never does...

Blood Price is the first Vicki Nelson Investigation. It's also probably the best of the lot. There are a number of sequels, of which 3 or 4 are worthwhile, but the series follows the usual pattern for a supernatural investigator story: episodic supernatural beastie of the month, formulaic plot, cliches galore, and little opportunity for a story arc. Mind candy, in other words, and in this case done passably well but with nothing to distinguish it.

Laurell K Hamilton does it significantly better with her Anita Blake series, and Mercedes Lackey has a short-lived Guardians series with a similar theme (and, to be honest, the first novel of the latter series is so similar to this one with respect to certain plot points that it can't be coincidence).

That said, this book is more than good enough to enjoy for a few hours and leave you with no regrets.

Smoke and Shadows

Smoke and Shadows is the latest "Vicki Nelson" novel. I suspect Tanya is returning to that universe for financial reasons, because the book itself feels like a "paint-by-numbers" effort that could have been spawned from a random plot generator. Vicki herself makes no appearance, and Henry plays a role that could be described as "muscle" -- if you were feeling like flattery, which any fan of this series won't be.

If that's not enough of a dire warning to drive you away from the book, read on. Because it's not really that bad. It's just stuck on the lower end of the Vicki Nelson series, and that particular series started at mediocre and went downhill about the time the corpse of Vicki's mother was turned into an undead robot by a deranged mortician. This book isn't THAT bad. In fact, after that disaster, it's almost a return to form. But it's definitely not as interesting as the first three.

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