Book Review
Title: The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix
Genre: Horror, Comedy
Rating: 3 Stars
I haven’t read anything by Grady Hendrix before but I have heard that Hendrix’s books toe the line between horror and comedy which is intriguing for me and after reading the dense behemoth that was Priory of the Orange Tree I needed something easier on my brain so I couldn’t wait to get into this book. The opening to The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires was interesting as we are introduced to Patricia Campbell, a mother and housewife whose only interactions outside the home come from her book club. The book starts in November 1988 where Marjorie Fretwell is running the book club but no one has read the monthly book and it sort of dissolves with several members including Patricia, Grave, Slick, Maryellen and Kitty starting their own book club focusing on novels and true crime and life seems to be good for Patricia despite her senile mother-in-law moving in when we jump forward to May 1993.
Things quickly begin to change for Patricia when another senile neighbour, Mrs Savage brutally attacks her one night when she is trying to take out the rubbish. This attack leaves Patricia badly injured as Mrs Savage was able to rip off one of her earlobe and swallow it. Mrs Savage dies shortly after this and Patricia thinks it is right for her to take something round for the nephew who was caring for her. However, when she makes her trip to the house she finds the man lying in bed, appearing to be dead and when Patricia gives him CPR he bolts awake scaring her and their relationship doesn’t get off to a good start. A few days later the man comes around to return her plate and introduces himself as James Harris and she invites him in to meet her family. However, James to be unnaturally focused on Patricia’s daughter, Korey but doesn’t say anything about it. Her mother-in-law, Miss Mary does believe James to be someone else and they put it down to her illness but Patricia is very drawn to James and decides to go visit him a few days later. When she does she learns that he has a condition affecting his eyes which means he can’t go out in the daylight but he needs to settle his aunt’s estate and Patricia helps him with that using her connections and she even ends up inviting him to her book club because he mentioned he had a huge interest in reading. I can obviously tell that James is a vampire as he has every cliché in the handbook and that Mrs Savage might have been bitten by him explaining the reason behind her attacking Patricia but I can’t wait to see where the book goes.
We enter June and July 1993, the creep factor is really ramped up as Miss Mary is convinced that James is someone called Hoyt and then one night both Korey and Blue tell Patricia that there is someone on the roof and while she doesn’t believe them at first, she soon finds that someone is trying to break into her home. They all pile into Miss Mary’s garage room as Patricia gets ready to run to a neighbours house and their phone isn’t working when James is suddenly there to save the day which was suspicious in itself but Patricia is so frightened that she doesn’t realise this. After a few weeks life begins to go back to normal for the Campbell family but Miss Mary tells Patricia the story of Hoyt and how her family is connected to him and a murder that almost destroyed her family. Miss Mary also swears that she has a picture of Hoyt and can prove that James is the same person and when she eventually finds it, it is on a night where Patricia is out celebrating Grace’s birthday. Mrs Greene is caring for Miss Mary but this is interrupted when a swarm of rats enter the house attacking both Mrs Greene and Miss Mary and almost killing the family dog, Ragtag. Mrs Greene suffers minor injuries but Miss Mary’s are severe and she eventually dies of the wounds absolutely devastating Patricia’s husband, Carter as he already lost his father when he was young and he has now had to lose his mother in this horrible fashion. Patricia decides after the funeral to pay a visit to Mrs Greene where she learns that several children have gone missing just like in Miss Mary’s story about Hoyt.
As we approach the halfway mark in the novel, I was really enjoying the story and the creepy small town atmosphere and I can’t wait to see how dark Hendrix actually goes with the novel. Patricia is obviously scared about the children going missing but when Mrs Greene tells her that she has a partial license plate number from a van seen around the neighbourhood, Patricia instantly recognises it as being from James’ van. She confirms this and believes that James might somehow be involved but wants more evidence. One of the girls that was missing for a while and returned was Destiny and Patricia asks Mrs Greene is she will take her to speak with the girl and she agrees. When they arrive, Wanda, Destiny’s mother realises that her daughter isn’t in bed and they immediately ring the police while Patricia goes out and searches the woods. She finds James’ van and when she opens the doors clearly sees him inside with Destiny doing something to her and she notices something odd about his face. She later realises that there was an extra appendage coming out of James’ mouth but to the police this mark looks like a drug track and remove Destiny from her mother’s care and Patricia isn’t trying to put it right but no one wants to help her. She tells the book club and at first no one believes her but most come around except Grace, however, the night morning Grace calls Patricia and tells her she spoke to a friend that owns a storage unit and found out James has been keeping his van there just like in Silence of the Lambs and they realises that James might be doing something to these children and are going to stop him but only Patricia knows there is something else going on as she believes James might be a vampire.
Eventually the husbands find out what their wives have been up to and decide to step in as they are all good friends with James and in some cases they have invested a lot of money together so they band together to protect him. Carter even goes as a far as wanting Patricia to take Prozac because he thinks that she is mentally unstable. Patricia holds to her beliefs as she is aware that James is dangerous and makes that perfectly clear even when Carter demands that she apologise to James she refuses as she knows deep down that he is a dangerous man and doesn’t want him around her children. However, this intervention fractures the friendships Patricia has with the other book club members who have their own issues to deal with and they withdraw from her but she isn’t giving up. Patricia soon realises that she isn’t able to do this on her own and in her anger she takes the entire bottle of Prozac and ends up on the psychiatric ward. This single actions causes Carter to lose his chance at a promotion and work and drives a massive wedge between Patricia and her children. In the end Carter gives her an ultimatum its her family or her obsession with James and then we jump forward three years to October 1996. It is immediately obvious that Patricia chose her family over her obsession with James but things haven’t been the same since. Blue and Korey both have very strained relationships with their parents especially their mother and when Blue runs away one night he ends up at James’ house which doesn’t sit right with Patricia but she doesn’t say anything about it because James has done so much for them in the past three years. However, one day when she enters Miss Mary’s room her ghost appears asking Patricia to wake up because James wants Blue and repeatedly tells her to go to Mrs Greene who can help her but Patricia hasn’t spoken to Mrs Greene since the incident at Grace’s house and she isn’t sure what to do now.
After the interaction with miss Mary’s ghost, Patricia can’t keep silent any longer and pays a visit to Mrs Greene who doesn’t want to help Patricia because of how she turned her back on them when they needed help but she does the right thing and passes on the picture Miss Mary left her and other information she has gathered over the years on James. Mrs Greene also now cleans James’ house and informs Patricia that she can search it this weekend with her as James is away and Patricia decides to ask Slick for her as they have always stuck by each other and she agrees. However, when she arrives at James’ house Slick is no where to be seen so Mrs Greene and Patricia start without and they don’t find anything but Patricia just has the attic left to search. In the attack she finds remains and knows she was right about James all along but then he returns home and she realises that Slick betrayed her trust and called James. During this scene where Patricia hides from James we some of his true personality come out and it gives me the shivers as he seems to know Patricia is there even if he can’t find her and this makes me wonder what is in store for me in the last 100 pages of The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires. Patricia seems to be putting the pieces together but James seems to have an answer for everything. While she and Kitty manage to remove the body from his house and bury it elsewhere as evidence and plant Francine’s drivers license in his car he finds the license and disposes of it. Slick also accuses him privately of raping her and when she goes to the hospital she finds out she has AIDS, and James claims this is because her husband and Carter have been cheating on their wives for a long time which makes sense given the new lifestyles they recently entered.
James also claims that he loves Patricia and her children and wants to take care of them in ways Carter doesn’t anymore but Patricia is hesitant. That night she finds James feeding of Korey and throws a fit but he claims he isn’t a vampire but he needs to consume blood from others to help with his disorder and that isn’t painful or harmful to the person he feeds from but Patricia is still suspicious and doesn’t want him to come apologise in person. With less than 50 pages left in the novel I have no idea how Hendrix is going to tie everything up but I am looking forward to it. The ending of The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires was interesting but for the amount of build up it didn’t really seem like a satisfying payoff. Unlike most horror novels, this one was really characters driven and I did like Patricia as a character but I would have liked to have seem more from James especially the darker side of him than we actually got to see during the book. The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires is also labelled as a horror comedy which I didn’t think was right. There were a few comedic moments within the novel but not enough to label it as a comedy, it was more of a domestic thriller with some nice paranormal and horror elements thrown in. Overall, still worth the read and is a good introduction to Hendrix’s writing style which I really enjoyed and I will definitely be picking up more books by Hendrix in the future but it wasn’t a new favourite for me.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
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