Product Description

It was the revelation of the millennium: witches, werewolves, vampires and other supernaturals are real. Fast-forward 13 years: TV reporter Delilah Street used to cover the small-town bogeyman beat back in Kansas, but now, in high-octane Las Vegas - which is run by a werewolf mob - she finds herself holding back the gates of Hell itself. But at least she has a hot new guy and one big bad wolfhound to help her out...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11965 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-24
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 394 pages

From Publishers Weekly
While the millennium revelation in this fantastic first of a new paranormal series might not be a shocker for urban fantasy fans—i.e., vampires, werewolves, witches and zombies come out of the closet after Y2K—Douglas (Cat in a Red Hot Rage) handles the premise with such spectacular style, it feels fresh. Delilah Street, who was only 11 in 2000, is now 24 and works for WTCH, a Kansas TV station, as a paranormal investigative reporter. When Delilah angers an undead co-worker and is demoted, she moves to Sin City in hopes of finding a possible blood relative seen on CSI Las Vegas V. She gets a job with Hector Nightwine, the show's producer, and falls in love with Ric Montoya, a former FBI agent who finds corpses by dowsing. Douglas spices the action with fabulous characters: Quicksilver, Delilah's protective dog; CinSims (Cinema Simulacrums), dead celebrities recreated via science and magic; the oldest living vampire in Vegas, once a famous aviator; and Cocaine (aka Snow), a devilish albino rocker. Readers will eagerly await the sequel.

Customer Reviews

Great author but I wish she'd get a better editor
Carole Nelson Douglas is a great writer, but I think that she needs a new editor. The last few novels have had some serious logic holes. I end up looking back to see if I missed a page. For example, at the beginning of this novel, why would Sheena the weather witch send a tornado to blow away Delilah's house? Delilah hadn't done anything to her. In fact, Sheena had ended up with her reporting job and rejected "boyfriend". There was no logical reason why she should be getting revenge on Delilah unless perhaps the rejected guy had asked her to, but it was never explained. It was a convenient plot device, but I couldn't see the logic behind it.

There are also an overwhelming number of mixed metaphors in this novel. I realize this has become part of her writing style, and I like a few here and there for flavor, but after a while I wanted to say "Enough already, let's get moving with the story!" It started to feel as though Yogi Berra had written it.

I also found this book to be too similar to Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series. They both have a strong female lead with some sort of evolving superpower fighting vampires, werewolves and various other creatures that are now out in public instead of skulking in shadows. It was disappointing to read a copy of someone else's imaginary world instead of something uniquely hers.

I have been a fan of Carole Nelson Douglas ever since 1992 when I bought my first copy of Good Night Mr. Holmes (which fell apart and had to be re-glued so many times that I ended up buying the series in hardcover because I reread it so often). She is one of my two favorite authors. Unfortunately, the last few novels have been harder to enjoy. I will continue to read them, but wish that she could go back to the better written (and edited!) stories such as the early Irene Adler (or even early Midnight Louie) novels.

Buried Potential
THERE MAY BE SOME SPOILERS BELOW (but nothing major, I believe)


I probably shouldn't read the Amazon reviews for a book before writing my own, but in this case I did, and there's a lot I agree with in the negative ones. The opening is just bizarre: I don't beleive for a minute that the Vampire anchorman would do what he did, and the cow mutilations are just a complete non-sequiter to the rest of the book. That said, let me add some complaints I haven't seen in the other reviews:

1) I don't like the "I'm just a hick from Kansas, so what do I know?" stuff. I've been to Kansas, and all over the rest of the country. Maybe it was once a backwater, but I certainly didn't notice it when I was there.

2) I don't like Ric. The author invokes Nick & Nora Charles several times, but if she is planning some kind of "Thin Man", "couple solves crimes" angle, it didn't work. They *plan* to work together, but in the event, Ric is absent most of the time. Why bother to have Delilah fall for the first nice guy she meets if you plan to have her work alone? For that matter, the other men she ends up interacting with are much more interesting anyway. Why have her tied down already when she flirts so well with Snow?

3) Give us *some* idea of what's possible and what's imnpossible. I thought I understood most of the underpinnings, then new creatures kept being pulled from behind the authors back. First we had vampires, and that was OK, then she introduced weather witches (for very little reason) and then werewolves. I thought I understood what kind of book it was then, but she followed that with CineSims, whatever Nightwine is, fae, and finally zombies. (And Delilah seems to be 'none of the above'..)

4) OK, maybe in the future, US TV will show nude corpses. Why not? HBO probably does it now. But somehow I don't think a nude corpse will become an overnight sensation with groupies and a major Vegas Floorshow devoted to it. And for that matter, why does Delilah run into crazed 'Maggie' groupies when it suits the plot but is able to walk around unmolested (except by her various enemies) at all other times?

5) I didn't believe in Haskell at all. Sure, the LV police dept is probably in the pocket of the werewolves, but there's no evidence that the country as a whole is corrupt. If he wanted to break in and kill Delilah for personal reasons, that's one thing, but to break in and *arrest* her? That puts all of his procedural errors straight into the system.

Anyway, enough of that. Why did I give the book 3 stars instead of 1 or 2? Because even when the plot makes no sense, Delilah has a nice sense of 'self', and her humorous observations on her various predicaments are amusing and endearing. I basically *like* Delilah and would like to see her in a *good* book.

Rough reading, Interesting Ideas
The world created by the author is relatively novel, and the way that the paranormal world operates also has it's uniqueness; however the whole book is truly brought down by an absence of coherent writing. Important details are missing (not in the "mysterious" way - more in the "incomplete" way); the pacing feels wrong; overall, the writing got in the way of the plot too much for me to get into the reading, let alone enjoy it.

This book just smacks of rookie author who's editor did them no favors. Hopefully she'll grow a little more as an author and realize the potential that this book showed.