This "certain dark thing" broke through my reading slump, and made me excited about reading again. Set in a "neon noir" Mexico City where vampires hide from Sanitation sweeps, a modern detective with a Van Helsing reputation gets swept up in a blood drenched turf war, and somewhere, a dreamy young garbage picker rides the subway across from a beautiful ... woman. I got swept away—along with Domingo, Atl, and a worldly melange of mythologies—into a world of drug cartels, vampire clans and romance.
This novella won't take you long to read, but it will stick with you. It's the kick to jolt you out of a reading slump. Joe extracts kidnaped girls from dangerous situations, but when one job gets messy, the violence of his work threatens to spill into his carefully guarded personal life. The writing is intensely physical, gritty, and concise without being too spare. Nothing is wasted here.
