Viva La (CIA) Vampire!
BOOK REVIEW: Vampires Rule!
By Rolf Mowatt-Larssen and Andreas Jaworski / BookBaby
Reviewed by Alma Katsu
The Reviewer — Alma Katsu is a retired intelligence analyst and the award-winning author of seven novels. Her latest historical horror novel is The Fervor, which the NY Times called “a feat of pure storytelling”. Her first espionage novel, Red Widow, is a nominee for the Thriller Writers Award for best novel, was a NY Times Editors’ Choice, and is in development for a TV series.
REVIEW — A CIA case officer is posted to Romania, where he soon learns that vampires are real. What’s more, the U.S. and Russia each have their own cadre of vampire case officers, the two sides locked in a struggle to the death for world domination. The serum that turns humans into vampires was developed by the Russians (naturally) and first used on a then-fledgling KGB officer by the name of Vladimir Putin… now known as Vampire Zero.
Vampires Rule! — written by Mowatt-Larrsen, a distinguished retired CIA case officer and senior fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center, and Jaworski, a retired CIA operations officer—is what is referred to in the publishing business as “high concept”: a story with a strong, easily graspable premise. These books are often thrillers and in order to sustain the pacing required for a thriller, other aspects of storytelling are sometimes sacrificed. Characters might be underdeveloped, or there may be holes in the story’s internal logic. This is not meant pejoratively: when making art, you take the form that provides the best vehicle for the concept. A story is what it is.
If you embrace the spirit in which Vampires Rule! was written, you’ll find it immensely enjoyable. It is a homage to case officers: the work, the attitudes they develop, their shared culture. This novel takes you inside the club, secret handshakes and all. The same goes for the Russian side: every character, every glance, every aside feels very much like the real thing.
You’ll notice, however, that the case officers, once they’ve been turned into vampires, don’t feel much changed. The authors refer to the case officer mentality on page 3: there is an inflated, one half-size great white shark suspended from the ceiling over the case officers’ bull pen. The joke is funny because it’s true: case officers like to think that they’re the predators in the human race. So, when the case officers in the novel are bitten and transform into the undead, they don’t miss a beat. Oh, there’s a little half-hearted whining about losing their humanity, but the much stronger sense is that they enjoy being the undisputed apex predator. The authors appear to have found, in vampires, the fullest and most complete expression of what it means to be a case officer.
The other thing you should know about Vampires Rule! is that it has an unabashedly Cold War mindset. You could argue that, particularly with Russia’s attack on Ukraine, we have been thrown back in time: fair enough. But here, too, I wanted to think that the authors were being ironic when they had senior officials paying smirking lip service to political correctness, or when the first female character—and the only woman among the cadre of 17 elite case officers—isn’t introduced until page 83. If you’re a bit old school yourself, you might not even notice it, but I couldn’t help but find myself wishing at times for a more modern take.
Still: viva la vampire.
Vampires Rule! earns a solid rating of three out of four trench coats.
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