Night Life

Davey Owen #2

by Ray Garton

When the vampires that survived his attack twenty years ago finally find him, Davey Owen is trapped in a dark world of vengeance where he will be made to pay--with his every last drop of blood--for what he did to them.

Genres: Horror, Vampires, Fiction, Splatterpunk, Paranormal, Supernatural, Thriller

338 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2005

About the author

Ray Garton is the author of several books, including horror novels such as LIVE GIRLS (which has a movie in the works), CRUCIFAX, E4 AUTUMN, and THE FOLKS; thrillers like TRADE SECRETS and SHACKLED; and numerous short stories and novellas. He's also written a number of movie and television tie-ins for young readers. He lives with his wife, Dawn, in California.

Reviews

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mr Burgess, a writer of horror novels, wants to find out if there really are vampires. Karen Moffat and Gavin Keogh, two private investigators, try to do some research. Their first contact is a reporter that wrote an article on "Live Girls" 18 years ago. He still is in contact with two vampires. Soon the action takes off and the real vampires, the brutals, come in. Karen, Cacey and Mr Burgess wife are taken by vampires. Will any of the good survive? Who's Anya and is the concept of "Live Girls" still in use? The author comes up with a fine follow up to his original story and closes the circle. At parts it was a bit winded though and the outcome was a bit too clear. Nevertheless a captivating vampire tale with a good shot of sex inside. You don't have to read "Live Girls" to follow the plot. Really recommended!

[Gianfranco Mancini · Rating 3 out of 5]

The lights twinkled through the haze of pollutants that hovered over Los Angeles. "Happy anniversary, Davey," she whispered. He squeezed her tightly and said, "Happy anniversary, Casey." They were gone in a fraction of a heartbeat, abandoning the red blanket bunched and tangled around the empty ice bucket. There was no one around to hear the fading sound of rapidly flapping wings of flesh on the breeze.

Sadly not as good as Live Girls for me, but that was far from unexpected having read a few reviews before starting this novel.

As Karen ate, Benedek said, "What do you make of all this, Karen? I know it's your job to gather information about vampires—" He always lowered his voice when he said that word. "—but what do you think so far?" "Frankly, I'm fascinated." "Good. Your job may be dangerous, but at least it's not boring you."

Not much a fan of fridging trope, but departure of two main characters from previous book was sad, bleak, and intense.

Karen felt a little light-headed and fought to regain her composure. What she had just seen flew in the face of everything she knew to be true. There was no such thing as vampires—they didn't exist, they were boogey men, the stuff of imagination and legend. Davey and Casey Owen smiled pleasantly at Karen and Keoph, who sat with their mouths hanging open.

I appreciated how the author expanded the world-building introducing "normal" vampires opposing the "brutal" ones from book #1, such a shame Davey's long waited confrontation with a certain villain was too much rushed and weak in my opinion.

She went out into the garage. Standing in the doorway, Burgess said, "Get back before dark. That's when they come out." Denise started the Roadster as the garage door slowly began to open. She had the car's top down. "Did you hear me?" Burgess said. "Get back before dark." She ignored him as she backed out of the garage, then drove away.

Not liked much newly introduced side characters, but private investigators Karen Moffett and Gavin Keoph are a nice team of paranormal detectives at their debut, and I'm just curious to see them starring and dealing with werewolves in Bestial, follow-up to Garton's Ravenous.




"What are they going to ... do to us?" Karen said. "I don't know, honey. I honestly don't. But I can promise you one thing: It's going to be very unpleasant." Karen gulped. "Thanks for cheering me up." "I'm not going to sugarcoat it, Karen. We're in trouble. If they wanted us dead, we'd be dead already. They're keeping us alive for something, and whatever it is, it's not going to be good. We need to be prepared.

'Nuff said.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s been almost 20 years since Davey blew the shit out of Live Girls. Vampires are still alive (you know what I mean) and well in the sex trade and they haven’t forgotten. They thirst for revenge. Now that Davey is out from hiding, he wants to finish what he started all those years ago. Mutants and Brutals and Anya…oh my!! It is going to hit the fan big time and it’s going to get bloody.

A very good follow up to Live Girls. It was nice to see a few of the LG characters revisited and the story continued. Vampires are cool when they are nasty and mean and violent. These be those.

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Garton's sequel to Live Girls has it moments, but it is most definitely second tier work compared to the first. NL takes place about 20 after Live Girls and our main protagonist Davey Owen now lives in L.A. with Casey, also from Live Girls, and now his vampire wife. The novel kicks off with a horror writer, also living in L.A., who has been causally investigating the existence of vampires for decades. Finally, he hires two pros-- both private investigators-- to track the vampires down. Are they just a myth or do they really exist. The writer gives the PIs basically a scrapbook of news about vampires, including a story published in the New York Daily News about the events at Live Girls in NYC. The PIs, who never met before, agree to the deal as the writer offers them a ton of cash for their efforts...

Garton expands upon his vampire world here, introducing two types of vampires-- brutals and 'normals'. Normals just want to blend in to society and they do not feed on living people; one of them discusses how they run a blood bank coop and other ways the normals can get their fix. Brutals, on the other hand, are true predators-- it was brutals who ran Live Girls and their sex nightclub in NYC. Unfortunately for our main protagonists, the brutals will do just about anything to stay out the news. When they learn about the investigation, things start to get very hairy...

Over all, a decent premise, but Garton merely hits a single or maybe a double with this one. This felt too much like a sophomore effort in a trilogy, something of a place holder, before the final denouement in the next volume. Lots of loose ends and plenty of room for another sequel, but that alone was not enough to justify my rating here. The dialogue felt awfully clunky at times, and even the attempts at dark humor (like the F-bomb dropping little old lady vampire) just felt off somehow. It lacked the clarity and drive of the first book, as well as the 'surprise' factor-- you knew what was going to happen just about off the bat. 2.5 stars, rounding up.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this sequel to Garton's vampire classic, LIVE GIRLS, a bestselling horror novelist hires two private investigators to find out if vampires truly exist in Los Angeles, based on information he had been compiling for years. But they do exist, and live among us as seemingly normal people, satisfying their hunger for blood by buying bottles of it in secret vampire-run stores. But the deadly ones, called brutals, prey on mortals and vampires alike. Before long, they all find out the terrifying cost of prying into the affairs of the brutals.

These aren't your melancholic or sparkling teen heart throb vampires. These are mean and nasty bloodsuckers, and Garton nails it with this frighteningly fun read. Highly recommended.

[Kasia · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's something fantastic about reading a vampire novel every once in a while, they are usually free of the daily grind and every day problems, vampires can be both dark, deadly and romantic, you can argue for your life with one, that option isn't always available if you however deal with a werewolf, now that's an obstacle that is hard to cross. Ray Garton has penned a sequel to his marvelous first entry; Live Girls, which by the way was hot and amazing and totally delectable. In this novel the action resumes almost twenty years later, few characters come back, Davey and Casey are now married but their past is still haunting them, a curious thrill seeker has hired two private detectives to follow the New York Times journalist, Benedeck to his hideaway and to probe him about the past, to find out if vampires are real, if they in deed exist. The problem is that they are indeed real, and as long as they are left alone they hunt and abuse in their dark chambers, when they are seeked out by careless humans who want to make a buck they turn into vengeful creatures, killing and whiping out anyone who wants to out them and disrupt their sweet, syrupy pleasure of using and consuming humans. The problem is clear, vampires that survived are threatened again and this time they won't give up easily, they will go out and punish anyone who stands in their way.

Night Life picks the story up in the future, but the abuse and hunger isn't any smaller. In fact the vampire emporium has really grown in the adult industry, using the primal human tug to eh-chant and attract people with money into it's clutches. In my eyes that has diminished their cool, the tingling, dark and corrosive vampiric desires was replaced by something cheap and dirty, hard to bond over. The novel was a nice read, I enjoyed it in one day, because I simply had to know what was going to happen next, but it was a bit weaker than the first, I don't know why everyone finds the need to compare the two but it's almost impossible considering how good this author is. His writing is so rich and fluid, his ideas without bounds, tickling our imagination and making readers out of the most stubborn people, who somehow have to have more. I hope that there will be a third book in this series, as I feel that the idea pool hasn't been drained yet when it comes to this story line. Some of the things that happened were shocking, it would be nice to see the aftermath of this little battle. I must however hope for a better cover, this one was really ugly, that's hardly a good thing.

[Wayne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read "Live Girls," about a decade or more ago. I can't believe that it took me this long to read the sequel. While the first book escapes me for the most part, I know I really enjoyed it and soon started reading all the Ray Garton books I could find. Damn, how did I miss this one? I will have to dig out "Live Girls" and re-read it again.

We get reacquainted with Davey Owen right off the bat. The man who took out a bunch of vampires in the first book. Soon after, the story starts up with a horror writer who hires a couple private eyes to find out if vampires are real or not. That opens a big can of worms. The vampires don't want to be uncovered, so they start to go on the attack. Soon people and friendly vamps start to die. When "The Brutals," the meanest of the undead kidnap Davey's wife and the female private eye, that sends the investigators on the offensive.

The characters, pacing. and action are what makes me keep reading books like this. Especially novels by Mr. Garton. Loved every page of this. Very highly recommended.

[Ryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I loved Live Girls when I first read it several years ago. Since then I've revisited it a couple times and am always pleased how well it holds up. It still remains one of my all time favorite vampire novels. So, naturally, I knew it was inevitable I check out the sequel. I really shouldn't have.

This book just doesn't seem to pack anywhere near the same punch as the first installment. Davey Owen is still the main character, but he doesn't seem like Davey at all. I realize eighteen years have passed, but this alteration doesn't seem like a genuine and natural change of character, it just seems like a different character. The same can be said for Casey Owen and Walter Benedek, but both of them are given so little page time that they hardly made an impact at all. Anya pops back up for zero reason and delivers virtually nothing to the story at all, especially given her unceremonious exit. The new leads, Keoph and Moffet are okay at best. They're going for a Mulder Scully situation and that just falls flat, as does the forced romantic predictions at the books end, but they were serviceable.

There is a bit of action here, a lot of shooting and running, but it was far from being as suspenseful and gripping as the raid on Live Girls. It's bloody, but hardly gory. There are a few decent horror set pieces (the initial stages of the raid on the Royal Arms, the attack on Benedek) but really nothing that hit hard or left much of an impression.

There is also a rather preposterous amount of gang rape and brutality that is really just glossed over. The brutals still work in the adult industry but now it includes rape/torture porn videos. Luckily, as with most of this book, we aren't really shown anything we are just told about, but for some readers I'm sure that's more then enough. What doesn't make sense is the ease with which these characters just kind of gel over that particular atrocity. At the end we are told repeatedly that one of the characters isn't a porcelain doll or gossamer, but I'm not really sure if being a tough female character is all it would take to get over a 13 man bukkake gang bang that we hear referenced about ten times. It's thrown in, possibly for shock value, but everyone seems pretty "Aw gee I'm sorry that happened to you, that sucks" and "It's okay, I'm tough and therefore I'll be fine." Probably not true.

The writing here was also not up the caliber that I'm used to from Ray Garton. It was sloppy, poorly edited, and incredibly repetitive and redundant. At one point Keoph is saved from death by a character that was killed twenty pages earlier, so there's that. On any given page of the novel the same sentences are said by characters multiple times with only slight variations, and in the descriptive paragraphs a similar trend becomes apparent. It was an easy read, but mostly because it was the same fifty three sentences on a loop.

I know I'm being harsh, but I wasn't expecting to be so let down by this. Live Girls is an incredible book and this just doesn't deserve to be in the same discussion at all. It lacked everything I was expecting from a sequel to such a story. It's not scary, it's not introspective, it's not all that action packed, it's not sexy or alluring. It's just a mess really. A redundant mess. And yet I tore through it in very little time, and despite all of my issues with it I was never necessarily bored so much as let down. 2 stars is very generous in my opinion, but when it ended I did find myself kind of hoping for Keoph and Moffett to lock themselves in that haunted house which counts for a little bit. Pure nostalgia for the old school classic novel that preceded this undoubtedly added a little more.

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is my second Garton book, after Bestial, which I enjoyed quite a lot. I liked this one as well. It was a fast read and I certainly wanted to know what happened next. It is a sequel to a book called Live Girls, which I haven't read yet and which I commonly hear is very good. The writing is smooth and easy to digest.

I had one pet peeve about Night Life. At one point there are three male characters having a delicious dinner at a restaurant together. Sounds innocent enough. But the problem for me is that 2 of the guys had wives who were being held at the time by brutal vampires and were being raped and tortured even as they were eating. The third guy's female partner was being held similarly, although he had only met her fairly recently. This one scene really threw me out of the story for a bit. I couldn't imagine people who seemingly loved their wives eating such a meal while they know their women are in danger and certainly being hurt.

[Farai Chikwanha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well-written book, but all the sexual violence was really hard to stomach.

[Steven · Rating 2 out of 5]

Warning:: spoilers ahead!

Sequels are a hard thing to do I understand that. So often a sequel will fall far short of its predecessor, it can sour the experience all together. Maybe its reader expectations or just that the author can't quite capture the magic a second time round.
I bring this up because Ray Garton's Night Life was a massive letdown. Maybe I went in with the wrong mindset, maybe Mr Garton couldn't hit the right notes but the experience for me overall was disappointing.
Lets get this straight right away. It wasn't bad. It was competently written, moved at a brisk pace and had enough sex and blood to satisfy the typical horror junkie. But thats where good things peter off…

To start with, this didn't feel like a Davey Owen book. It felt like a new story that Davey had been slapped into. So much of the story revolved around the new characters of Moffet and Keoph that Davey and co felt like a rushed afterthought. And even then the new characters had no real weight. Moffet and Keoph have no real personality and the overarching villain Victor Barna has little more than a couple chapters where he sits in his office and acts like a smug corporate prick.

Come to think of it, the whole story felt rushed. Live Girls worked because the story was small and contained. Which meant a smaller more indepth cast. Here it feels like Garton is trying to shove an entire universe into a plot that cant accomodate it. So much of the dialogue is comprised of infodumps that just vomit the world into our laps. First rule of good writing: show don't tell.

Which brings me around to one of this book's biggest sins: DEATH. Night Life is not subtle about showing you that shits getting real when Benedek and Casey are killed off. Now Benedek's death I could accept. He was older and he had an entire chapter devoted to building up his demise. There was genuine emotional impact behind his death.
Casey however didn't get that luxury. Her severed head is delivered to Davey in a box. Now even ignoring the massive plothole there (vampires in Gartons universe rot in seconds upon death, so why didnt Casey's head?!) the way her death was handled was just sloppy. Up until that point, the writing suggested Casey had something up her sleeve only for her to die unceremoniously offscreen. Even the villains don't get the benefit of an awesome death. Anya, an antagonist from Live Girls is built up in Night Life as a dangerous opponent only to be shotgunned down in the book's climax. I get that death can demonstrate the cruelty of the universe, but when you kill a character the readers can identify with, punch them in the gut, not the balls.

I have a theory about this book. Garton wrote this for one of several reasons. Either to shut the door on Davey Owen, to shut fans up about a sequel to Live Girls, a cashgrab, an aborted attempt to recapture the magic or an attempt to start a new series with Moffet and Keoph at the helm. I could be way off the mark here, but that's what Night Life felt like to me: a sequel that fell apart under the legacy it carried.

[William M. · Rating 3 out of 5]

The premise of this book had me hooked early on. A wealthy and famous author hires a couple private investigators to look into the legitimacy of a secret vampire culture, one that he has personally been researching for years. Great idea. Unfortunately, the rest of the book seemed rather predictable with a by-the-numbers hunt for the bad guys, complete with a gathering of allies, a sizable weapons purchase, and a target practice session for the main protagonists to bone up on.

Although the last 50 pages were full of action and enjoyable images of grotesque gore, I felt a little let down by this book. Some of the other problems I found were a few continuity errors along with portions of dialogue that seemed a bit cheesy. Most of the scenes moved so quickly there was not time to build any real atmosphere. This was not as good as Garton's last book in the series, LIVE GIRLS. There were things, of course, I enjoyed about this book - likable characters, well written prose, and a few pleasantly unexpected moments. However, I can only give this a mild recommendation.

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not one of Garton's best. It's also, as often stated, not as good as Live Girls. However, it is still a good and fun read. Would make a great John Carpenter film, I imagine. Recommended if you're in the mood for some tight action and crazy characters.

[Apzmarshl · Rating 1 out of 5]

Brutal.
Characters not well fleshed out at all which may have been a plus. By the time everyone was gang banged I didn't really want to care about them.
I am disappointed with myself for finishing the book.

[Alondra Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 Stars (..maybe less...)

Stilted or unsuitable dialogue in relation to the situation. I still need to think about this.

[Herman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well this meets my quota for sex and mayhem, can’t deny it’s has a certain zest for, in the moment drama, but it bends the vampire formula a bit beyond the believable, well if you believe in vampires (and of course who doesn’t) then how they manage to survive during the day is rather mysterious. One even had a long multi-war history of survival during the civil-World War’s One and Two, don’t know how he managed thousands of days of sunshine but the plot is more a vehicle for the action and not a structure that has much too do with logic. That said, I still enjoyed the book, a solid three stars I’m afraid the rather two-dimensional characterization as well as the rather reuse of some very old notions of women as being an extension of the man so killing or raping the woman is more about settling scores with the man. Sorry while it’s part of western society historical gestalt it’s not one of our better parts and since it’s kind of a big piece of this story I have to take a point off for use of pervasive clichés in a negative way, creatively redone I admit but negative all the same. I’m into negative exploitation stories as much as the next guy but I’ve reached a point that I want something more if it’s going to be a cartoon about the dark side of life – fine- just in the end give me a life reaffirming message or character development and growth something other than just sleaze carnage blasting every vampire their all dead now lets move on with our lives.

[L. Wiggins · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kinda lose the first book's atmospheric feeling and is more action packed. Lore is expanded though.

[Chuck Byrd · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.25 Stars
Ray is an excellent writer ...
We will all miss him..
This is part 2 of Live Girls from 1987.
While still a good book and worth reading it didn't
pack the punch of Live Girls...

[Melly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Even with all the gang rape (and the handwaving that went along with it) this is one of the most ridiculous books I've ever read, and, I mean. I've read Modelland.

[Cory Cline · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ray Garton's Live Girls is one of those books that when you put it down, you know you want to read more. It's not fair that the only vampire books that get sequels are known for their sparkle, or what ever you call it.

While his vampires are capable of falling in love, and can resist the urge to sink their teeth into every neck they see, they are also capable of being the brutal monsters they are meant to be.

In Night Life, Garton moves his vampires across the country from the grimy strip club in Times Square, New York circa 1980 to the sleazy Los Angelas porn industries of the 2000's. The move is not only fitting, as everyone knows, sequels must always take things to the next level, but Garton effortlessly changes the whole feel of the story to match the move.

Live Girls just felt like you were in Times Square, New York during the 80's. Peep Shows and adult entertainment found down back alleys of a city known for it's dirty little secrets. Night Life takes us to the shock me if you can era of adult entertainment, where girls have to do much more than just offer a peep.

In Night Life we are introduced to Martin Burgess, a horror writer with an obsession over vampires. He wants to know the truth behind the stories he has read regarding the Live Girls club in New York. He hires a couple of private investigators, Karen Moffett and Gavin Keoph, to dig through the muck and trace these stories back to their origins.

This leads them back to Walter Benedick, the reporter who tried to uncover the truth, but has since gone into hiding to try and keep his distance from the Brutals. Walter's problem is that he is still a reporter at heart, and wants the truth to be exposed. He convinces Davey and Casey Owens, now married and accustomed to living the life of the undead, to talk to the investigators.

Of course, the Brutals are not keen on being exposed and are willing to do everything they can to keep these secrets from being exposed. Like an artist uncovering his painting for the world to see, Garton removes the cover and unleashes his Brutals upon our heroes, and while there is no sparkle, there is plenty of splatter.

Is Night Life as good as Live Girls? I wouldn't go that far. How many sequels are honestly as good or better than the original? I didn't know what to expect when reading Live Girls, and it's hard to recapture that feeling of stumbling across something new. That is perfectly acceptable though, I didn't want anything new with this book. I wanted to catch up with Davey and Casey, I wanted to see what these vampires were doing, and how they have adapted to the ever changing world just like the rest of us have. Night Life is a solid sequel. It is gory, brutal- but most importantly, it is fun. Thank you, Mr. Garton, for catching us up with these monsters that do what they are supposed to do... act like monsters.

[Ian · Rating 1 out of 5]

Really didn't sit with me well. Live Girls was one of the best vampire novels I've read in a long time, so I was disappointed when this one failed to live up to its predecessor. For one, I disliked how humanized the vampires were. In the first book, they had an air of mystery to them that made them creepy as hell. In Night Life, they hardly seemed like vampires at all. The flashback sequences were horribly written, drawn out and crammed in with no real transitions. It was not erotic like the first book, but rather, just senselessly crude. Also, I didn't care for how abruptly Casey and Anya were killed off.

[Shawn Manning · Rating 3 out of 5]

Classic Garton

It's been some time since I read Live Girls , when it originally came out, but I had no trouble picking up with the sequel. If you liked the original, then you'll groove on this. It has all the Garton staples; sex, violence and whipsaw pacing.

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

The vampires with machine guns lost Ray a star.

[Sue Chant · Rating 1 out of 5]

Kindle. The dullest and talkiest vampire fiction I've ever attempted to read. Couldn't be bothered to finish - 37% through.

[James Reyome · Rating 3 out of 5]

There HAD to be a sequel to "Live Girls". Had to be.

It's hard to write a summary or "Night Life" without spoilers, and I...I couldn't. There is much to be spoiled, because an awful lot happens. You don't piss off a society of vampires without knowing there's bound to be a price on your head, and Davey and Casey are all too aware of how grimly they're being pursued. Still, they've made a pretty good life for themselves on the other side of the country from the site of their turning. Trouble comes from an unexpected quarter: a horror writer called Martin Burgess, who's convinced that vampires are real, and who hires private detectives Karen Moffat and Gavin Keoph to track down Walter Benedek, source of the only comprehensive story ever written on the Live Girls tragedy. Moffat locates Walter...and that's enough to merit a spoiler alert, as things do not end well for Walter, one of the heroes of the first volume.

I won't kid anyone by saying this story approaches the superbly engaging work that was 'Live Girls'. It doesn't. It comes close, and it reads like the wind--I read it in almost one sitting--but it's a little disappointing, I don't mind admitting. Still, it was loads of fun throughout, and introduced a terrific character in Mrs. Duplessie. The only real issue I have with 'Night Life' doesn't have a whole lot to do with the story, it's with the publishing. Leisure (now, alas, long since gone) didn't do a very good job with this one, and there's numerous typos in my copy, inexcusable with a professional publisher. If it's ever re-done, I hope the new publisher takes good care of it.

Oh. And the ending. I mean, really. I hate coming out of a book depressed. I get it, real life and all of that, and I write myself and I know as well as anyone that life just doesn't present happy endings to everyone. But you would think that Davey and Casey, after everything they'd been through, might get one? That heavy sigh you're hearing is me.

After all this though, I still don't have any trouble recommending this, especially if you enjoyed 'Live Girls'. You know what you're getting when you pull a Ray Garton book off the shelf: pure fun.

[Ellroy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, this was dark! I read this book quickly after reading the first part (Live Girls) which I thought was the most fun vampire story Id come across in quite a while. I wasted no time getting to part two and also raced through this one.
You could compare the ramp up in stakes of the two books to the movies Alien and Aliens. I was not prepared for the shift that came with this one. It was pretty brutal! Other reviews have elaborated more on that, I won't I'll just say its not for the feint of heart. I'm all puns eh.

Anyways, did I enjoy this book? Yes! Very much, maybe more than the first. It was a really clever take on vampires especially with the setting. I also liked the characters and relationships a lot. Pure and simple it was a page turner and hard to put down. Ray Garton writes really fast paced story with quick chapters that never bore or dull for a moment. very movie-like. The two books really have the feel of an 80s horror movie, I love that. I can only hope for a film adaption!

If there are criticism's to be made, there were a few times were I thought to myself, that's a plot hole. But these never lingered for too long or spoiled my experience that much.

All in all these two books were the best vampire stories I came across (in any medium) in quite a while. Once again I'll emphasise that I can't wait to read more of his books!

[Chris Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fine follow up to Live Girls, my personal favorite vampire book!

Ray Garton serves up another tasty bite of the vampire underworld in this sequel, set 18 years after the events of Live Girls. It was fun getting to see our friends (and a few villains) from the first book, and see what has become of them. We get plenty of new characters and some genuinely scary vampires, which is how they should always be. Monsters, not sparkly emos.

While still present here is Garton's penchant for the erotic, it's much more tame in this book than other's I've read by him. A much smaller dose, so to speak. But what our heroes go through in this book is no less horrific than in Live Girls, and there are a few 'gut-punch' parts that REALLY hit you in the feels. Garton plays with your emotions like a master and, well, he IS a Grand Master of Horror, after all.

If you liked Live Girls, don't miss this one. If you haven't read any of Garton's work, start with Live Girls and then check this one out. It's a fine pairing you don't want to miss!

[Mark · Rating 1 out of 5]

(DNF, made it 70% of the way through)

What the hell happened here?

This isn't one iota as good as Live Girls was. It barely even felt like it was written by the same author. Live Girls is certainly not high literature, but it was exciting and raunchy and I gave a shit about what was happening in the story. I came away from it loving the whole experience. I did not feel that way once while reading its sequel.

There are no characters in the book at all, just talking heads devoid of personality that supposedly-horrific shit happens to to advance a bland story. Characters are tortured and gang-raped. Loved ones and friends are murdered. We are TOLD that this is horrifically traumatic and devastating to the people it happens to, but virtually nothing about their behavior afterwards indicates that anything's wrong. Edgy bullshit keeps coming at you but the atrocity and violence has zero weight to it, it's like a small child trying to sound tough by swearing.

[John Bruni · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's good to get back to the world of Live Girls. I was sad to see a few survivors of the first book meet their end here, but such is the nature of horror. This one takes a different tactic from the first. In this one, an exceptionally successful horror author has so much money that he decides to blow a bunch of it hiring the two greatest private investigators in America to find out if vampires exist. One thing leads to another leads to everyone's lives are now in danger because the brutals know all about the investigation, and they're leaving some pretty gruesome hints for them to close the book on this one. There's just one problem, but it's about the ending, and I don't post spoilers. You'll know what I mean when you get to it. I don't know if there is a third book in the series, but if there is, I'm eager to read it.

[Mark R. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I realized shortly after starting on Ray Garton’s “Night Life” that the book is a sequel to “Live Girls,” a novel that came almost twenty years prior. Normally I would stop reading and go back and get the first book, but for no particular reason except maybe that I’m working through a stack of Leisure books, going full steam ahead, I just decided to take on the sequel and hope not to be too confused.

No worries there, as “Night Life” functions as its own, self-contained story, and necessary plot elements from “Live Girls” are gone over in a few perfectly acceptable pieces of exposition.

The setup in “Night Life” is a little similar to the first episode of “True Blood”: vampires are living among us, and some are good and some are bad, and the good ones drink bottled animal blood instead of preying on humans. But their existence is a mostly well-kept secret that goes by largely unnoticed by humankind.

This one fellow, however, wrote a piece for the New York Times eighteen years ago, about his experiences with vampires. Now, two private detectives, tasked by a popular horror author with determining the truth to claims of vampiric activity, seek him out, to find out what he knows. The writer of the NYT piece refers them to a nice vampire couple, who help the detectives in understanding their culture. Unfortunately, this investigation draws the attention of a group of “brutals”—evil vampires, who feed on people—who are in no hurry to have their existence brought out into the open by a couple of private dicks.

This is a fast-paced book, with some good action scenes, sympathetic good guys and real nasty bad guys. I hate the name “brutals,” and how frequently it’s used, but what can you do. There are also a few rape scenes I’m not entirely sure are necessary, but again . . .