The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

Patricia Campbell is your average Southern housewife. Her life is pretty humdrum, a workaholic husband, two children on the cusp of being teenagers and got their own lives; a senile mother in law who needs her constant care. The only escape she has is in her book club, who share an unusual love of true crime. But one evening she is violently attacked by her elderly neighbour and then the neighbour’s nephew, James Harris comes into her life. On the surface, James is handsome, well read, and charming, and he soon incorporates himself into Patricia, and her family’s life. But when children from the rougher side of town go missing, Patricia begins to have doubts about her charming neighbour and whether James Harris is the man he portrays himself to be. Patricia gradually realises that he is a bigger monster that what she had first imagined.

I thoroughly enjoyed Hendrix’s take on the vampire myth. James Harris is indeed the quintessential vampire, good looking, seemingly intelligent, who quickly charms his way into Patricia’s life and that of her family and friends with a disturbing ease. He is Ted Bundy, Christopher Lee and Brad Pitt rolled into one and I can quite understand how this character slithers his way in. Patricia is a woman I can empathise with; she is bored of her life and finds a kind of escapism in the crime novels she reads. It was hard to see her life slowly begin to disintegrate and how James Harris begins to take her friends, her children, her husband and even tests her sanity. But like all surviving heroines of horror, Patricia is determined to save them all from this monster, whatever the cost.

In some ways Hendrix wants us to imagine what it would be like if your average Mum had to fight a vampire, we all know how fearless they can be in protecting their families, so why not make it a blood sucking, soulless creature that wants to hurt them? In my estimations, Patricia Campbell is certainly up there with Van Hesling, with her rolling pin rather than a stake.