Vampires on the Run: 04/15/17

Vampires on the Run by C.M. Surrisi is the sequel to The Maypop Kidnapping. Quinnie's BFF is still away but she's made friends with Ella. She also has Zoe's cousin, Ben, as well as a new boy, Dominic.

The big news, though, is the arrival of Ella's aunt and uncle, who together cowrite the popular Count Le Plasma paranormal mysteries under the pen name Victoria Kensington. Anyone who reads mysteries regularly can name at least one duo writing under a single pen name: sometimes they are just collaborators, and sometimes, they are in fact, married. In some types of mysteries and thrillers, there is conceit that the described events really happened, and the author is more of an editor.

Sometimes, though, the author(s) takes on the persona of their books, and basically ends up perpetually cosplaying their world, their characters. For Aunt Ceil and Uncle Edgar, that means dressing like Goths — though to Quinnie and her friends (except for Ella, who obviously knows her aunt and uncle) they look and act like vampires.

It doesn't help that a large dog has been spotted at night and animals have been killed. The adults all say it's a coyote. Quinnie and her friends, wrapped up in the vampire lore of comparing and contrasting Dracula to Transylvania Drip for school, can only see the creature as a wolf — as a vampire in one of its many animal transformations.

That is the set up for Vampires on the Run. There's something else entirely going on here that unwraps in an organic and satisfying way as Quinnie and her friends go through the process of trying to prove that vampires are real. I had my own theory early on which ended up being completely, one hundred percent wrong, and that for a mystery is a rarity for me. That said, being wrong was very satisfying.

I hope there is a third book.

Five stars

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