Product Description

The eagerly anticipated new vampire computer game, "Cult of Blood", is ready for release when its lead programmer disappears--along with the game's vital source code. Also missing is teenager Chloe Dorn, last seen playing a vampire Live Action Role-Playing game on the streets of Pal Alto, California. As intrepid P.I. Catherine Sayler hunts for them, the programmer's body is discovered--drained of blood, with two small puncture wounds in the neck. But Chloe is still missing, alone in the dark world where kids play at violence and the malevolence of a murderer will soon hurl them into a nightmare.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2127082 in Books
• Published on: 1999-05-01
• Released on: 1999-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 304 pages

Amazon.com Review
Linda Grant says that her latest Catherine Sayler mystery began when her real-life daughter Megan announced one night, "I'm going to Cal to play the vampire game. I might be late." Thanks to Grant's parental instincts (and her sharply-honed writing skills), Vampire Bytes is such a perfect Polaroid snapshot of how affluent teenagers spend their time that future scholars might well wind up studying it for clues the way researchers today dig into Chandler and Hammett for insights into 1930s and '40s lifestyles. LARP--live action role-playing--seems like lots of fun, and its young fans certainly get more exercise than they would sitting in front of a computer screen as they act out various fantasy games. But when the games turn deadly, Sayler has to use her patented combination of pragmatic detection and feisty determination to protect the role-players. Other Sayler sorties in paperback include Blind Trust, Lethal Genes, Love Nor Money, and A Woman's Place. --Dick Adler

From Publishers Weekly
Role-playing games (RPGs)?virtual and actual?take center stage in this perceptive sixth entry in Grant's series starring San Francisco Bay Area's technologically savvy PI Catherine Sayler (Lethal Genes, etc.). Catherine hires on with a computer gaming company to find its lead programmer, Matt Demming, who has fled and taken with him a new vampire game's source code. Before she gets very deeply into the case, the young man's body is found, drained of blood with two puncture wounds in his neck. Because Matt also played the role of a vampire in a live-action RPG taking place on the streets, the police are divided as to whether the killing is related to business (his computer and the code are still missing) or a cult. While the cops hash out their theories, egged on by a minister who has sworn to demolish all cults, Catherine agrees to help search for Chloe Dorn, the missing friend of her teenage niece. Chloe, Catherine learns, had been with Matt the evening he disappeared. E-mail, computer games and the Internet figure prominently as Grant expertly juggles the emotional and technological elements of the game players' fanciful, often terrifying world, where the lines separating fantasy and reality blur.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Live Action Role Playing (LARP): Is it something teenagers do just for fun? Or is it satanism? That's the question when a young man is brutally murdered, his body drained of blood, and his girlfriend suddenly goes missing. Matters become more complicated when the victim is discovered to possess a stolen code for a computer game poised to hit the market. When private detective Catherine Sayler is called in to investigate, she encounters a group of young adults keeping dangerous and guilty secrets, as well as some grown-ups determined to prove that LARPing is a pastime inspired by the devil. Grant's use of multiple first-person perspectives--Sayler's, the missing girl's, a police detective's, among others--gives the story a rather choppy feel, but she balances that nicely with a stark portrait of contemporary young adults on the fringe of society. There are a few less-outrageous teens and some responsible adults in the mix, but the countercultural dynamics are convincing and frightening enough to inspire nightmares, especially among parents who have teenagers at home. Stephanie Zvirin

Customer Reviews

Great read that transcends genre
Computer programmer Matt Deming, a fan of LARPING (live action role playing) is murdered on the same night Chloe Dorn disappears. Private Investigator Catherine Sayler is hired by the girl's parents to find the missing teenager. Catherine is also hired by the deceased's employers who want a computer game disc and associated code book that Matt had stolen from them returned.

As Catherine investigates both cases, she soon realizes that they merge. It seems that Chloe was having sex with Matt and was with him the night he was killed. Making the investigation even more difficult for Catherine is that the town's clergy and police are struck by anti-satanic fervor. Though the anti-Satan zeal interferes with her case, Catherine knows that she must quickly stop the killer before the missing girl becomes his next victim.

VAMPYRE BYTES is a well designed mystery that has many viable suspects with reasonable motives for committing the crimes, turning the novel into an almost unsolvable who-done-it. Additionally, the entertaining story line contains serious social issues that are intelligently presented in an informative yet entertaining manner. Linda Grant has scribed a very intriguing Catherine Sayler mystery that will have fans wanting more tales starring the intrepid sleuth.

Harriet Klausner

This book is an "edge of your seat" mystery with many twists
This story is exciting and fun. Once you start to rerad it you can't put it down. Every chapter adds a new twist to the story. At first, the different chapters speak of different stories and characters, but as the story progresses all of the story lines and characters are intertwined. The plot is exciting and the language is up to date. It paints a very realistic picture of the life and times of society in the 1990's. This is a must read for any mystery enthusiast.

An incredible novel
Vampire Bytes is a truely riveting contemporary horror/mystery. The horror comes not from blood sucking ghouls, it comes from something far scarier and real - teenagers! A very fun story with a fascinating look into roleplaying (in real life as well as on a computer).