The Care and Feeding of Stray Vampires
Molly Harper
Pocket, Jul 31 2012, $7.99
ISBN: 9781451641837

In Half-Moon Hollow, Iris Scanlon runs Beeline a vampire day-time concierge business. Her clients ask her to take care of just about anything, which she does for a nice fee. Because of her variety of gopher tasks, Iris is an expert on vampirism, something she considers TMI especially for a church goer (at least on the Big days) like her.

She brings welcoming flowers and the contract to her newest client Mr. C Calix. Only he lies on the floor looking pale. He drank poisoned donated O blood. She refuses to give him her blood but provides him two tampered proof sealed bottles. Cal pleads with the daywalker to find him a hiding place while he works on who wants him dead-dead; Iris does for a fee. To her chagrin she is attracted to her acrimonious customer as Iris refuse to break her no fraternization rule.

Though the locale is the same as the Jane Jameson urban fantasy saga (see Nice Girls Don’t Bite their Neighbors), The Care and Feeding of Stray Vampires is a new offshoot series. This amusing romantic frolic stars a business minded human and an irritable vampire; who prove that only love can resolve the paradox of an irresistible force meeting an unmovable object.

Harriet Klausner