I received this book and a small payment through Online Book Club in exchange for an honest review.
22-year-old John Pye had been a police officer for three years. One ordinary night, he was sent to investigate a landlady's claims of a missing tenant. The only possibilities were that the man had left without paying, was sick, or had died. Although any and all of these options had been investigated in other cases by the Stoke on Trent police force, this night was fated to become the most dramatic and unexpected of all. It turned out that the tenant, a Polish immigrant, was dead. Through clues in the man's room, John realized that this was no ordinary death; this man was obsessed with vampires. How did he die, then? Surely there's no such thing as vampires. John will have to dig deep beneath the surface in order to solve the mystery of this innocent man's death.
I don't usually read short stories/novellas, but I may begin to more often. I've read quite a few recently, and very much enjoyed them. This book was quite short, since it only covered one police case. I thought it was very interesting that this was a true story - or at least, claimed to be. I'm not certain whether or not what is detailed in this book truly happened, since there's evidence pointing both ways. The book claims to be true, and it has real photographs in black and white, which matches the time period. On the other hand, I searched up the name of the Polish immigrant who died and I didn't get any hits. This is odd, considering that it's supposed to be a well-known story with books and movies spun off of it. Also, why would an official police photo, used for evidence, be allowed to be published for the public to see? The intrigue and mystery of this true versus false actually tends to add to the excitement of the story. Either way, I enjoyed the book.
This book was independently published. I've read a lot of independently published books before, and when I hear that a book isn't with a legitimate, well-known publishing company, I tend to get wary. The books I've read before like this usually have incorrect spelling and grammar scattered all throughout. I was pleasantly surprised by this book. If I didn't know otherwise, I would think it was professionally published. Aside from the British spelling, which threw me off at first, the only things I truly noticed were misplaced or lack of commas. If more writers wrote and edited like John Pye, or got several others to edit their work, perhaps I wouldn't have such a negative preconception about independently published novels.
Pye is definitely a talented writer. Like all writers, he has places to work on, though. I very much enjoyed his story, despite the size; however, I found my mind wandering at several points, due to the large quantities of descriptions. I had to reread several sections because of this. The language used was very entertaining, and I found many words I hadn't heard in a very long time. I always enjoy when an author uses rare or old words (as long as they're not too antiquated), since it brings my mind back to the present and forces me to pay closer attention to the storyline. Many authors pay so much attention to the setting that they don't realize how much they're missing out on when they describe conversations and other major occurrences. Pye depicted these happenings with a perfect amount of description. If he'd focused on the setting a little less, I may have enjoyed the rest of the story more, since the other writing was very well done.
I found that I enjoyed this book, though perhaps not as much as I may have if there had been fewer descriptions that caused my mind to wander. Probably half of this short book was just descriptions. Overall, I would recommend this story though, since fiction or not, it was still quite entertaining. I would give this book a rating of three stars. Any reader looking for mystery, police stories, or vampires would love this short story.
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