P. Gardner Goldsmith

Gardner Goldsmith’s Bite is a novella with a vampire killer as a protagonist, but it’s more Sam Spade than Underworld. Sylvester Cole is in his favorite Las Vegas dive bar, watching the news on TV of an inferno he set in what he’s decided will be his last vampire killing. He’s toasting his impending retirement and dreaming of getting away when Ashley Courtland walks in. She is the type of woman that right-angles every noir hero off his chosen path -- a woman whose desperate story and knockout looks compel him to action against his better instincts. Soon Sylv Cole is chasing a mystery vampire through the seediest back streets of Vegas, fighting off thugs and fleeing the cops -- all while trying to find Ashley, who’s gone after the vampire, herself. Vampires don’t actually appear in this story til’ well into its midpoint. This doesn’t matter. The story’s already racing and anyway; danger, itself, in all its myriad forms, is the real villain in Bite. What I enjoyed most was Sylvester Cole’s first-person account of his misadventure; the quick slang of a human tomcat who knows he’s on his ninth life. Here’s Sylv fighting: “With a grunt, I threw my shin at his nutsack, hitting ground zero with all I had.” Sylv drowning: “Bubbles rose around me like a strawberry in champagne.” Sylv dodging the bullet that hits a propane tank: “…the explosion threw me to my knees like a Pilgrim in fear of the Lord.” Bite was an impulse buy for me, and one that paid off. The paperback (and maybe the e-book?) has two bonus short stories in the horror genre, both different in tone and topic from each other and from the novella. I enjoyed these also. Check out this versatile writer and look for his upcoming sequels to Bite.… (more)