June 23, 2009

Review: Blood Bar by Norm Applegate

Come back Thursday June 25th for a guest post by Norm Applegate!


Author's Website, MySpace and Twitter page


In the alley next to The Haven a “blood bar” for so-called vampires, a young man named Drach is murdered. His life was taken by The Haven’s bartender, Erin who is seeking revenge against all vampires as payback for her father’s death.

When Drach’s girlfriend, Rose, becomes a suspect in his murder she calls in Kim Bennett, an S&M Dominatrix and madam. Kim has been known to be useful in solving crimes and Drach had mentioned her to Rose before his death.

Kim knows without a doubt that vampires don’t exist. She looks upon The Haven and it’s groupies with a strange fascination that she doesn’t understand. As she delves further into the investigation it becomes clear that Drach died to help keep The Black Testament, a sacred document written by Jack the Ripper, secret. Now Kim begins to question the reality of vampires in our world and ends up in a fight for her life with both Erin and a secret vampire society who will stop at nothing to get their hands on the book.

Blood Bar was totally not what I was expecting from the description of this book. It is a dark and gritty tale of power and lust and it kept the pages flying by. Even though the product description describes Kim as a “quintessential heroine whose passion for S&M led to celebrity status as a hell-and-back murder mystery sleuth who's been there, done that, and then some” I was expecting a lighter paranormal tale that was more focused on humor than horror. Although I wouldn’t describe Blood Bar as a horror book its certainly not for the faint of heart.

This is Applegate’s third book featuring Kim Bennett. She makes her debut in Into the Basement, which is soon to be a motion picture and continues her tale in Into the Spell. Both of which I will be going back and reading as Kim is literally a kick ass heroine that I want to read all about.

3 comments :

Nicole (Linus's Blanket) said...

It definitely seems like it has a lot going on in it.

CherylS22 said...

Looks interesting. I've been following this one on the blogs & want to read it more & more!

Cindy B.of Montana said...

This one sounds a little like a cross of Stephen King with Bram Stoker! I like both, so I'll have to give this one a try.