Killer Instinct
The opening of this psychological suspense novel smells of evil: the body of a prostitute is found hanging upside down in an abandoned Wisconsin cabin, an arm severed off, genitals mutilated and her blood missing. Coroner Jessica Coran, a made-for-Jodie Foster character, heads the FBI team assigned to track a latter-day Count Dracula. As it turns out, the serial bloodsucker is a mousy medical-supply salesman who often stalks his victims at hospitals in a gray van. Calling himself Teach, he uses a tracheal tube to siphon off their blood, his methods not unlike Jessica's obsessively meticulous autopsies. Clearly, killer and medical sleuth are two of a kind: soon the vampire sends his counterpart a love letter and longs to sink his fangs in her neck. He's a far more soulful figure than the novel's mechanical gumshoes. "Virgin blood was hard to come by, but according to the books, it had the most curative powers," Teach muses as he lies in a bloodbath, unworried about AIDS. The plot may be predictable, but Walker has created a complex, chilling high-tech tale that many readers will lap up. Walker wrote Curse of the Vampire under the pseudonym of Geoffrey Caine.Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to thePaperbackedition.