How’s this for a story?

Two cops take on a gang of vicious killers trying to free their leader from prison. One is a seasoned U.S. Marshal who’s fought the gang before and is determined to bring them down once and for all. The other is a Pennsylvania State Trooper who’s never dealt with anything more dangerous than a multi-car pileup. In one battle after another, the State Trooper finds herself dangerously overwhelmed by the situation. She soon realizes that the gang is after her for some reason and that her Fed partner may be using her for bait. There’s a final showdown, a stunning revelation, and then it all ends

Sound like a good action-thriller?

Now, what if we substitute “vampires” for “vicious killers” in the first sentence of that summary.

How’s that sound?

That’s pretty much the story of David Wellington’s 13 Bullets, the first in a series of novels about State Trooper Laura Caxton and her battles with the undead. By taking a fast-paced, suspenseful thriller and adding in an extremely nasty take on vampires, Wellington has given us an entertaining, if somewhat gruesome, read.

Bloodthirsty Vampires

Wellington’s vampires are very much a throwback to the classic, even the folkloric, vampire; vicious, bloodsucking creatures of the night who’ll take your soul and your life without blinking. They are big with bald heads, pointed ears, and a mouth full of shark-like teeth. When these vampires feed, they don’t delicately bite you on the neck. They tear chunks out of you. And when they’re done, they can bring you back to life as a “Half-Dead”, essentially a zombie slave to do their bidding. If they really like you, they’ll dig into your mind with their hypnotic powers and pass on their curse, trying to drive you to commit suicide so that you’ll come back from the dead as one of them. The only way to kill one of them for good is to destroy its heart (e.g. by driving a stake through it or, as the main character does at one point, rip it out and burn it). Light frightens and weakens them, but doesn’t kill them. The author taps into both literary and folkloric traditions for his vamps and creates terrific, and terrifying, villains for his story in doing so.

Socially, vampires are a reality in Wellington’s version of history; known to exist but rare enough that they are a nasty rumor to most people (indeed, most people believe that Lares, the vampire killed in the opening chapter, was the last in the U.S.). Some people even romanticize vampires just as they do in our reality, ignorant of how horrific they really are. With this social setting, the author kind of hits a happy medium between “vampires are public and everywhere so why doesn’t the government just stamp them out” and “vampires are a weird secret that is somehow unknown to the mortals around them save a select few”. They are a mysterious, secretive lot, but well enough known that the government actively hunts them and stories about vampire killings make the news without having to pass them off as “weird serial killers”.

Two Tough Cops; One Mean Vampire

The story focuses quite clearly on the two law enforcement officers. They are pretty distinct personalities, to the point where they sometimes clash. Indeed, the interplay between them drives the story as much as the vampire hunting does. Meanwhile, the real villain is present in only a few scenes and is pretty much running the show from behind the scenes, much like the stereotypical imprisoned gangster who can still run his (or her, in this case) gang from behind bars.

Laura Caxton is a Pennsylvania State Trooper assigned to highway patrol. She’s a troubled young woman who is haunted by the suicide of her mother and her father’s death from lung cancer (she views his smoking as slow suicide). A lesbian, she is in a relationship with an artist, but it isn’t altogether a happy one. Her best friends seem to be the retired racing greyhounds that she rescues from an uncertain fate when their track careers end. Laura’s troubled past leaves her vulnerable to the vampire’s ability to hypnotize and manipulate their targets and the gruesome battle against them threatens to wear her down. Still, she manages to muster strength to fight on, though her lack of experience often brings her down. A scene where she mentally battles a vampire who is trying to get her to kill herself and become one of them is one of the strongest sequences in the story.

Jameson Arkeley is a Special Deputy with the U.S. Marshals. In 1983, he took down Pieter Lares, believed to be the last vampire in the U.S. In Lares’ lair were four elder vampires, barely clinging to existence using blood provided by Lares. Arkeley torched the lair after killing Lares, presuming that would get rid of all of them. But one, Justinia Malvern, survived and is in a sanatorium, protected from Arkeley by a court order recognizing her human rights. But, twenty years after Arkeley took down Lares, she has spawned a new vampire whose mission is to collect enough blood to revive her. Arkeley knows this and will stop at nothing to prevent it. A cool customer, even cold at times, he isn’t above manipulating those around him to get at the vampires. When he seconds Caxton to his investigation, it’s because he knows that the vampires have taken some kind of interest in her and she might prove useful as bait. As things unwind, though, he does show a more compassionate side, even if it’s only in flashes. In the end, he’s out to destroy Malvern and that obsession seems to trump any other concerns.

Malvern herself isn’t much of a character, though her manipulations are actually what sets up the story. A withered, one-eyed monster dating back four hundred or so years, she’s the kind of vampire who bides its time, waiting for a chance to come back to “life” and wreak her special kind of havoc. In a couple scenes, she is almost sympathetic, until other events remind us of her true nature. Both cops are well-drawn characters. There are clichés in there, but they are well-used and not tiresome as they can sometimes be. Malvern isn’t really meant to be a character, much as Dracula wasn’t. She’s a plot device and force of nature, but not really much of a personality at this stage.

What’s the bottom line here?

The bottom line is that 13 Bullets is a horror-action-thriller that manages plenty of all three. Scenes of vampire lairs and vampire attacks are gruesome, the action scenes move well and have enough suspense and excitement to keep things moving, and the whole package comes together as a taut, entertaining thriller. The characters are developed just enough to be interesting but the novel doesn’t dwell on setting or character, giving us just enough to keep us in the story as it moves forward. This helps keeps the novel to a breezy 300 or so pages in trade paperback (I dislike novels that have 200 pages of essential story and character development and 400+ pages of padding). While I started this review with the idea that this is a cop thriller with vampires, that doesn’t do it justice. The vampire element is well integrated into the story, so that it isn’t just a by-the-number thriller with different villains. It’s a true melding of the cop thriller and monster hunter genres. If there’s a weakness, it’s that the ending and the “Big Reveal” at the climax just don’t seem as thrilling as some of what has gone before.

For the roleplaying set (of which I was once a member and may be again some day), this offers a good campaign concept (PCs working to stop Malvern) and a portrayal of vampires that could be easily be statted up and used in any number of settings from fantasy to modern action to classic horror. The only real requirement is that the setting probably needs to be fairly dark, given how nasty these vampires are.