Vampire Sunrise

Delilah Street, Paranormal Investigator #3

by Carole Nelson Douglas

WHEN THE STAKES ARE DEAD -- OR UNDEAD!

Werewolf mobsters and vampires run Vegas, but that's yesterday's news for Delilah Street, paranormal investigator. What's truly fearsome is her bloody discovery of an undead evil rooted in ancient Egypt. Now, with her lover Ric fighting for life after a grim battle, the chips are down.

But Delilah is a born winner who has never let a little danger throw off her game, and she's been learning fast since she came to Sin City. Her affinity for silver is making mirror-walking a real breeze, and being forced to accept the albino rock star sorcerer Snow's Brimstone Kiss has ramped up her powers to a startling new level. With the help of her trusty uber-wolfhound Quicksilver, not to mention the orange demon parking valet Manny, Delilah is determined to solve even more paranormal secrets, and hopefully save the few innocents left in town. But can Delilah win her high-stakes gamble for life and love against ancient gods and lethal supernatural odds?

Genres: Urban Fantasy, Paranormal, Fantasy, Fiction, Vampires, Paranormal Romance, Werewolves

384 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published November 12, 2009

About the author

Carole Nelson Douglas is the author of sixty-four award-winning novels in contemporary and historical mystery/suspense and romance, high and urban fantasy and science fiction genres. She is best known for two popular mystery series, the Irene Adler Sherlockian historical suspense series (she was the first woman to spin-off a series from the Holmes stories) and the multi-award-winning alphabetically titled Midnight Louie contemporary mystery series. From Cat in an Alphabet Soup #1 to Cat in an Alphabet Endgame #28.
Delilah Street, PI (Paranormal Investigator), headlines Carole's noir Urban Fantasy series: Dancing With Werewolves, Brimstone Kiss, Vampire Sunrise, Silver Zombie, and Virtual Virgin. Now Delilah has moved from her paranormal Vegas to Midnight Louie, feline PI's "Slightly surreal" Vegas to solve crimes in the first book of the new Cafe Noir series, Absinthe Without Leave. Next in 2020, Brandi Alexander on the Rocks.

Once Upon a Midnight Noir is out in eBook and trade paperback versions. This author-designed and illustrated collection of three mystery stories with a paranormal twist and a touch of romance features two award-winning stories featuring Midnight Louie, feline PI and Delilah Street, Paranormal Investigator in a supernatural-run Las Vegas. A third story completes the last unfinished story fragment of Edgar Allan Poe, as a Midnight Louie Past Life adventure set in 1790 Norland on a isolated island lighthouse. Louie is a soldier of fortune, a la Puss in Boots.

Next out are Midnight Louie's Cat in an Alphabet Endgame in hardcover, trade paperback and eBook Aug. 23, 2016.

All the Irene Adler novels, the first to feature a woman from the Sherlock Holmes Canon as a crime solver, are now available in eBook.

Carole was a college theater and English literature major. She was accepted for grad school in Theater at the University of Minnesota and Northwestern University, and could have worked as an editorial assistant at Vogue magazine (a la The Devil Wears Prada) but wanted a job closer to home. She worked as a newspaper reporter and then editor in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. During her time there, she discovered a long, expensive classified advertisement offering a black cat named Midnight Louey to the "right" home for one dollar and wrote a feature story on the plucky survival artist, putting it into the cat's point of view. The cat found a country home, but its name was revived for her feline PI mystery series many years later. Some of the Midnight Louie series entries include the dedication "For the real and original Midnight Louie. Nine lives were not enough." Midnight Louie has now had 32 novelistic lives and features in several short stories as well.

Hollywood and Broadway director, playwright, screenwriter and novelist Garson Kanin took Carole's first novel to his publisher on the basis of an interview/article she'd done with him five years earlier. "My friend Phil Silvers," he wrote, "would say he'd never won an interview yet, but he had never had the luck of you."

Carole is a "literary chameleon" who's had novels published in many genres, and often mixes such genre elements as mystery and suspense, fantasy and science fiction, romance with mainstream issues, especially the roles of women.

Reviews

[Kathy Davie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Third in the Delilah Street, Paranormal Investigator urban fantasy series set in Las Vegas.

My Take
Why, oh why, does Delilah keep going on about the Brimstone Kiss she shared with Snow?? Nothing happened. Supposedly. So why…are we being tortured over this? So, somehow, the Brimstone Kiss from Snow has evolved into the Resurrection Kiss and it's that which revived the almost-dead Ric?

Can you say "drama queen"? Douglas writes this entire story at such extremes of the dramatic angle, it makes me want to barf. Ooh, "bridal suite turns into predawn death trap". I should be so lucky.

Ooh, I wanna live in the Enchanted Cottage! Complete with ghostly maid service!!

Nasty...Delilah falls into Ric's dreams and learns about his childhood history.

Omigod...can we stretch this even further…?? Delilah's concerned because her CSI twin, Lilith, and her own name ALMOST spells "death". Yup, I bet it could almost spell all kinds of things. And then Douglas goes off on some weird segue about Cesar's 1940s mistress Vida and how her name can be re-arranged to spell...oh, no…"Diva"!! What the point is...I haven't a clue.

Well, it's one way to grab the reader's interest, having Delilah eliminate Ric's whip welts by licking them away only for Grizelle to burst in to demand Delilah stop. God forbid, Douglas tells us how it actually affects Snow...why else would we bother to pick up the next installment??

The Story
Delilah and her allies have gotten Ric out of Egyptian hands (see Brimstone Kiss) and Snow has him set up with complete medical care in the Bridal Suite at the Inferno. But Delilah is worried about the coma he's in and she flies to Virginia to get his "mom".

Delilah also applies her manipulative skills to Hector to goad him into granting her a bit part on his CSI so she can do more detecting. Cesar Cicereau also needs Delilah's skills — his dead daughter is bewitching all the monitors in his casino and he's had to shut down all sorts of moneymaking enterprises. Either Delilah gets rid of Loretta and he'll get rid of her. Only Loretta wants the same aid or she'll keep haunting the Gehenna.

Then there's that minor matter of the trapped humans under the Karnak Hotel. Ric had sensed them when he'd last been there and he doesn't intend to leave 'em there!

Then there's Graduation Day for the Snow groupies! An important date for a group that Delilah put together…that she's almost too embarrassed to attend. Might have been better if she hadn't when she encounters that pack of hyenas only to end up on a slab for Victor Frankenstein!

The Characters
Delilah Street is something other than human with her power of the mirror. And a passion for vintage clothing and classic movie. Dolly is her '56 black Cadillac Biarritz with a red leather interior and a white ragtop. Quicksilver is part wolfhound and newly adopted from the Las Vegas ASPCA. And suddenly protective of Ric. Irma is her subconscious girlfriend.

Ric Montoya, a.k.a., the Cadaver Kid, is her raising-the-dead boyfriend, a skill that almost got him killed. Philip and Helena Troy Burnside are Ric's "foster" parents; he's military and she's a doctor of psychology with some very particular and intuitive skills. Captain Kennedy Malloy is a friend of Ric's and it she might have a thing for Sansouci. Grady "Grisly" Bahr is the coroner for Las Vegas and seems to have a very handy deal with Nightwine Productions.

Lilith Quince is Delilah's twin — hiding out in mirrors and framing Delilah for her kills. Theda Bara's Cleo brings Shezmou back into Delilah's life. Howard Hughes is the oldest vampire still in Las Vegas and seems to have a lot more going on than we've previously known.

Hector Nightwine is the producer of CSI and a seriously odd man. He's agoraphobic with a gourmet taste in truly disgusting "food". His butler, Godfrey, is a CinSim with a secret alliance with Delilah. CinSims, Cinema Simulacrums, are a result of a merging of zombies with classic film stars brought back to "life" to serve whoever purchases their bodies. Nick Charles and the Invisible Man are CinSims at the Inferno who help Delilah with her investigations, break-ins, and escapes; lucky Nick, Snow falls in with Delilah's suggestion to reunite him with Asta and Nora. Peter Lorre/Ugarte and Rick Blaine (from Casablanca) are more helpers.

Snow, a.k.a., Christophe, oddly enough, gets the last word so to speak — Delilah actually apologizes. Grizelle is his shapeshifter (white tiger) bodyguard.

I still haven't figured out Caressa Teagarden's role. Delilah was supposed to have interviewed her in Kansas but she disappeared. And she's reappeared in a nursing home in Vegas, giving Delilah odd little presents. Caressa had a twin before they were separated in the movie business; their original names were Lilah and Lili. Caressa does tell Delilah about Gargouille. A dragon who will devour a person at their extremes of innocence or guilt. The same dragon Snow brought forth in Brimstone Kiss. It also seems that Christophe may be Caressa's cousin.

The Karnak Hotel hosts a brother-sister pharaoh/vampire team — Kephron and Kepherati — who are much too interested in Delilah and Ric. Bez is a dwarf god who helps along with Shezmou, Anubis' headman.

Loretta Cicereau is the vicious ghost daughter of a werewolf mobster, Cesar Cicereau, and she wants revenge. Seems her undead/dead boyfriend, Prince Krzysztof, is rampaging through Vegas as a result of Ric's forced aid and she wants the same aid. Sansouci is Cesar's vampire hostage (and hit man) with a sympathy for Delilah. Madrigal is Cesar's pet magician. He and his two assistants Sylphia and Phasia have been trapped at the Gehenna for 60 years.

El Demonio Torbellino was the leader of the zombie-selling gang of Ric's childhood. Now he "heads up a dozen criminal operations all over Mexico and along the U.S. border".

The Cover and Title
The cover is Vegas with its neon lights and gigantic, lit-up martini glass behind a leather-clad Delilah in her tight pants and bustier, holding a silver whip as she stares at something coming down.

A Vampire Sunrise is the drink Delilah whips up on the private plane winging Dr. Burnside to her "son's" bedside.

[Cathy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mostly rambling first person ponderings, even when in serious danger. And cheeseball dramatic lines that weren't dramatic or funny. Dumb stuff like being in deadly danger (again) and not dealing with it for a few days (again) and rushing back into danger (again). Not as much SinCin Hollywood glam, tons of Egyptian menace and glitter. No answers about Snow or Quicksilver. Don't bother with this one unless you want to know what's happening because you plan to read the next book; gluttons for punishment like me.

[Nan Sampson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The 3rd in the Delilah Street paranormal series proves just as good, if not better than, the first. Its tongue-n-cheek tone delights me and yet the story has just enough of a (dare I say?) bite to keep me caring about her characters. The relationships between Ms. Street and characters we've met in previous volumes deepen in this one, as would be expected, and the world she's built up is endlessly entertaining to me. Talk about Viva Las Vegas. And man, wouldn't I love to have a Godfrey in my life!

Thanks, Ms. Douglas, for another terrific book! Keep 'em coming!

Nancy

[Jan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Still a good story but eventually some sequels become tiresome. Not the author's fault, really. There's only just so many encounters with the "bad guys," and miraculous life-saving experiences one can handle. Favorite character - Quicksilver. Not sure I'll continue but has been a decent read.

[Gabrielle]

I’ve DNF’d at chapter 13, page 105.

[Wendy Hines · Rating 3 out of 5]

In a supernatural society only the strong survive.

Delilah Street is a paranormal investigator in post-Millennium Revelation Las Vegas. After the twenty-first century, all of the bogeymen of myth and legend came out of the dark and blended into human society. Delilah makes sure the werewolves, vampires, zombies and other monsters leave the innocent alone.

Ricardo "Ric" Montoya is a sexy ex-FBI agent and Delilah's lover and partner. However, in a recent battle, Ric was the victim of an ancient Egyptian Vampire's empire suckfest. They wanted to know Ric's secret for raising the dead. Delilah finds a way to heal Ric, who ended up alive but comatose, but at someone else's expense.

Now, Delilah and Ric are back investigating even more paranormal secrets. But Delilah and Ric have a few secrets of their own. With Delilah accepting a Brimstone Kiss and Ric's attack, they have been given new abilities. They will need to learn how to use them quickly if they hope to defeat evil ancient gods.

VAMPIRE SUNRISE is a fun paranormal romp of epic proportions. Delilah and Ric's love for one another leaps from the pages, as well as, all sorts of scary creatures. Ms. Douglas does an impeccable job of world-building and balancing mystery, romance and humor. Fascinating and scary, paranormal and urban fantasy lovers alike will love Delilah Street.

[Lottie · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you read and love paranormal stories, you will love this series.
The 1st book is the building blocks for the series, I noted some of the comments on book 1. personally I had no trouble with the scenes ,I had no problem following scene to scene as for the names being spelt wrong. I didn't notice because I was too engrossed in the plot.
By the second book I had grown a keen interest in vintage clothing, black and white films and encouraged to make up my own cocktails. needless to say this book takes off with the mysteries left behind from the 1st one.
Resurrection of ( jury's still out )the love of her life C.V, Mr Quick with his magic slobber, nemesis Lillith who can only be glimpsed in the mirror and last but not least the anti hero who can raise dragons but doesn't know whether kiss her or kill her.
Looking forward to 4th book.

[Starling · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed it. The series is getting better book by book. This is the third one and I'm looking forward to the fourth.

Both of the main characters continue to both figure out how their paranormal abilities work, and pick up new abilities as their adventures keep stressing them. The book starts slowly with the aftermath of the events in the second book. I'll admit that I might have preferred if the whole hospitalization part of this book had taken place off camera BETWEEN books. Once the action starts the plot moves right along.

[Lori Whitwam · Rating 3 out of 5]

The weakest book so far in this series. I wasn't sure what the main plot point/conflict was supposed to be, with so many moderately important storylines combining, diverging, resolving or disappearing. Still, Delilah remains a strong yet vulnerable heroine, and her "dog," Quicksilver is a favorite of mine. The Ric Romance was downplayed through most of this book, which took place in a fairly short timeframe. Hopefully the next book will strengthen the series.

[Tricia (McAllister) Houseman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. But wish I read them in order, to get more of an idea of the entire world Ms Douglas brings you into.
The ability to bring a person back to life. To raise zombies. Investagate paranormal events. Viewing individuals who were brought to life from old black & white movies (CinSim).
If you read this book, it's great to read all the books prior to this. But it does seem like a great series to read.

[Cindi Kelley · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's elements of this book series I enjoy. The CinSims especially. I like most of the characters in the book too. The plot needs work though. It's just somewhat lacking. I can't put my finger on what exactly. And some of it I feel ghosts of other books. Especially Sookie Stackhouse and Rachel Morgan.

[Writtenwyrdd · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another offering in the Delilah Street series. I liked this one, but it dragged in spots while the author developes Delila and Ric's romance - not via action but by Delilah pondering things about their romance. It was a good read, but a lot more intellectual than the previous two novels. I enjoyed it, but wasn't wowed.

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

FOr the book in itself it was a refreshing new take on vamps and shifters and such and I really liked it. I loved both the main leads and am really looking forward to reading this whole series in order. Now if your haven't read the books before this one as I did it was a very confusing start and we missed a whole lot going on darn it, but you get caught up in the story and go with it. I loved it.

[Sally · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had fond memories of some light fantasies by the author that I read in the late 80's so I picked this one up when I saw it at the used bookstore. It is the third book in the series so perhaps I'm missing something by starting in the middle, but this was terrible. Rambling, confusing plot; cutesy first person narrator; ugh. Didn't make it past the fourth chapter.

[Catherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

It gets 3 stars because I didn't hate it and it was witty, fast paced and well written. How ever by the wnd of it the fast paced witt was bloody annoying and rather narcissistic. Furthermore even though I am glad I didn't read the 1st book or wish to read the 3rd for that matter, I didn't have a bloody clue half the time as what was going on because I didn't read the 1st.

[Joseph · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable, but not as good as the first two in the series. It seemed like the author took a lot of space to move the story along a little distance. So much talk it seemed to drag in some places and was hard to focus on, not as much action. I might have to reread it to make sure I got everything.

[Kira · Rating 3 out of 5]

not as good as the first two books in the series. i enjoyed it but it was a bit of a mish-mash.

[Niko Llewyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

2 1/2 stars
Interesting, but all the Egyptian stuff went on and on, also there wasn't nearly enough Snow to suit me.

[Mary · Rating 2 out of 5]

Uneven. I think I skipped the second one, so I thought that's why I was a little confused, but from the other reviews, I don't think reading the second one would have helped with this one.

[Unicorn-san]

I had lost interest on reading this book around page 32. The story either didn't catch my fancy, or it is because I needed to read the 1st book in the series.

[Christine Hayes · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was just weird. I had to put it down a few times and take a break. I usually can finish a book in a few hours.It wasn't awful.But,I just don't know if I will read the next installment

[Helen Fleischer · Rating 5 out of 5]

#3 Supernatural Vegas

[Mitticus]

Second chance.... will see.

[Runningrabbit · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like her love life!

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

More bad supes, more twists. Will Delilah ever find Lilith? Where do her alien nightmares come from? Will Ric recover from the Karnak battle?

[Jeannie Lopez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun exciting .. Delilah is a fun strong woman with lots of problems but makes them fun and exciting.. I love the CinSims ..

[Becky Voyles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved, loved, loved this book series!

[Diana · Rating 3 out of 5]

fun series

[Cathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a gift from my friend. Rather entertaining book.