Book review
Written by Trevor O. Munson
Titan Books paperback
Release date Out now

Vampire private detective Mick Angel is caught up in the sleazy underbelly of 21st Century Los Angeles…

For all the publicity connecting this to Moonlight, which starred Alex O’Loughlin before he shot off to film the Hawaii Five-O remake, there’s little link between the character of the TV series and the vampire PI in this novel (bar their first name and condition). You can see why CBS were keen on some of the concepts – and equally why they insisted on major changes before it came to the screen.

Fusing Raymond Chandler with fantasy has been done before (Rob Shearman’s audio play The Maltese Penguin shows how it can be achieved, paying homage to both genres), and of course Buffy’s ex, Angel, was similarly a vampire detective in LA. But Chandler’s style is easy to imitate – it’s much more difficult to make it sound right. All too often in this novel, it feels as if Mick Angel is more concerned with spitting out the right laconic line than anything else.

It doesn’t help that for all its 21st Century trappings – meth addiction, cellphones – the core of this story could have been told in a 1940s setting, and indeed would probably have been the better for it. The reader is also rather beaten over the head with clues, with the narrator commenting on everything he sees and hears far too much. It’s an easy, entertaining read (especially for Moonlight fans), but there are better examples of this sub-genre. Owen Morris

VERDICT: 6/10
There’s a good idea at the heart of this novel, but the execution is slightly less assured.