by Ed Ward
Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story by Christopher Moore
Simon & Schuster, $23 hard If this were a Hollywood meeting, and I had to give a high-concept description
of Christopher Moore’s third novel, I’d say something along the lines of
“Slacker meets The Vampire Lestat, with touches of Story of My
Life.” It would be unfair to this hilarious, popular novel, but it would
get me heard. Moore has always played his horror novels and tales of the supernatural for
laughs, so the idea
of a na�ve, young, would-be beatnik writer falling
for an upwardly-mobile young woman who just happens to have become a vampire is
right up his alley.
Jody is having a bad day: her hair is messed up totally, her pantyhose has
a painful rip in it, and, to top things off, on her way home from her job at a
San Francisco insurance company, she gets ambushed by a vampire and passes out.
When she awakes, she notices that one of her hands is burned black, she’s been
put into a dumpster, and someone has stuffed about $100,000 in bills into her
blouse. When it turns out she’s been asleep for over 24 hours, she realizes she
can’t hack sunlight, hence the burned hand, and retires to a motel. As for C.
Thomas Flood (Tommy, as he’s known to one and all), his encounter with the
Emperor, a San Francisco street character, gets him a job supervising the night
crew at the Marina Safeway, where they spend the time bowling with frozen
turkeys, ingesting various drugs, and occasionally stocking the shelves. When
Jody walks in, it’s lust at first sight.
Jody needs someone to deal with daytime for her, and Tommy… well, Tommy
needs to get laid. It seems like a good deal all around, especially once they
realize that they genuinely like each other, although like any new couple,
there are rough edges. Like dead people who keep showing up, drained of blood.
Jody’s not doing it, of course: She doesn’t want to draw attention to herself.
No, it’s the vampire that created her, hanging around, making trouble. They get
a big freezer to stash a bum who was dumped right outside the door of their new
place. Together, they try to figure out what’s what with Jody, because, as she
says, “I didn’t exactly get an instruction manual.”
Enter Al Rivera and Nick Cavuto, S.F. cops assigned to the vampire murders
that have the city worried. Rivera is a former narc, Cavuto is the
stereotypical tough cop, except that he’s also gay. Their first break is when a
body is found near Jody and Tommy’s place, with Tommy’s copy of On the
Road clutched in its hands. This is not exactly the best time for a lovers’
spat, but these things never happen when you want them to. Tommy makes a date
with a new cashier at the Safeway, and Jody goes out for revenge on the bar
circuit. Her evening is a mess: The vampire finds her and taunts her, and she
heads home, willing to give Tommy another chance. But an ad in a free paper
she’s found interests her: a support group for recovering vampires. It turns
out to be useless, but she’s spotted by a Chinese grad student who says he has
discovered that vampirism can be reversed, and he’s willing to work with her.
She decides to think about it, and returns to the apartment just as the sun’s
coming up.
Tommy comes home from work, finds her passed out, and decides, hell, he’s
going to have his date with the cashier. Knowing that Jody’s metabolic
processes are all but shut down, he puts her in the freezer with the dead bum,
figuring he’ll get her out before he leaves for work. Then he, too, goes to
sleep. Bad move: in walk Rivera and Cavuto with a search warrant. Tommy goes
downtown for questioning. Of course, he’s been at work when all of the deaths
occurred, so he’s off the hook, but he unburdens himself to Rivera, who
suddenly realizes that the Emperor has sworn there’s a vampire on the loose in
the city.
From here, Bloodsucking Fiends careens down its last pages like a
well-oiled machine fueled by goofballs, culminating in a showdown with the
vampire at his yacht in the San Francisco Marina. Will Jody call the Chinese
guy and have her condition reversed? Will the lovers live happily ever after?
If only it were that easy. Suffice it to say that things keep changing course
right up to the last page, and the reader leaves the novel thoroughly
entertained.
Moore has a comic gift that
bodes well for his becoming a household name in the odder sorts of households,
and Bloodsucking Fiends, which has already been bought by Disney, looks
to be his breakthrough book. The dialogue crackles, the characters are as
appealing a bunch of misfits as you’ll find, and there’s even a hint that
Rivera and Cavuto may figure in a future book, which, given their odd-couple
relationship, is good news.
If Anne Rice’s books seem a bit too over-the-top and claustrophobic, here’s
the perfect antidote. And if nothing else, it proves that being a member of
Generation X can really, really suck. n
This article appears in October 13 • 1995 and October 13 • 1995 (Cover).