THE SILVER CASTLE

A hospice nurse confronts horrors after relocating to a high-tech housing complex with deadly secrets in Barron’s thriller.

There is a massive housing project underway, stretching some 170 kilometers through Saudi Arabia’s Neom region, called “The Line.” The totally enclosed glass and steel structure is popularly described as a skyscraper knocked over on its side. In this novel, the author reimagines The Line as a corporate-sponsored, urban-futurist enclave running through the Mojave Desert; the inhabitants have nicknamed it “The Silver Castle.” Melanie (Mel) Sanger, 42, is just moving in after fleeing the heartbreak she left behind in Los Angeles. She meets a man named Celwyn in transit who takes an immediate liking to her—but in the state that she’s in, Mel isn’t interested in giving him the time of day. The menace inherent in the narrative is apparent from the start: Idrissia, the corporate overlord running the sleekly clean, convenient, key-coded digs, just exudes alarming dystopian vibes. Even more alarmingly, it transpires that Mel’s would-be paramour Celwyn isn’t actually the lawyer he originally claims to be—he’s really a Knight of the Holy Order of Carpathia, devoted to hunting down vampires. Mel learns there is a whole mess of the undead creatures about to descend upon the unwitting residents of the Castle. It’s a good thing that, in addition to being a lionhearted hospice nurse, Mel is immune to vampire bites. It all makes for bloody good fun: “He spun the blade in a downward arc, and a second later the bloody severed head of the vampire lay on the floor of Saul’s room next to her still-twitching body,” the author writes with gleeful abandon, finding creative ways to put his own spin on traditional vampire lore. It’s been a while since a protagonist has kicked as much Nosferatu butt as Buffy the Vampire Slayer; happily, it looks like Mel’s vamp-hunting career is just getting started.

Adventurously macabre and fun.