Customer Reviews

Stalking the Vampire: A Fable of Tonight: A John Justin Mallory Mystery

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

For getting this out on Kindle so soon after I hit the "I'd like to read this on my Kindle" button.
I read the first book, Stalking the Unicorn years and years ago when it first came out, and while I was making a list of my favorite fantasy detective stories, I found this one.
John Justin Mallory is a Manhattan detective who found himself in an alternate fairyland type Manhattan with monsters, demons and other mythological beings and creatures. He has a partner who was a very well known hunter of monsters and a cat-girl office cat who's attitude is very catlike.
It's as much rollicking good fun as the first book with just as unlikely a cast of characters. The story is solid and enjoyable, and John Justin Mallory is a detective you feel sorry for and root for during the book because of all the troubles he's seen. The dialogue is quick and funny, at times laugh out funny.
Looking forward to the 3rd book in this series!

John Justin Mallory, a tough, wise-cracking Big City PI who prefers brains and assistance to guns and brass knuckles, and uses a fast $5.00 bribe rather than a fast smack to the face.
Good thing, since some of these hoods aren't overly affected by bullets or fist fights, but everyone could use a saw buck.

He works the streets of a Manhattan that is recognizable but takes some strange loops and curves from time to time.
Familiar places have names that aren't quite what he remembers, and streets sometimes appear only when you're actually looking for them.

These streets are infested with trolls selling things. If only the things they were selling were even remotely things you'd want to buy.
Businesses are surpassingly weird...but quite useful at times.

Resnick has a writing output like Niagara Falls, but of them all, I like John Justin and his friends and enemies the most.
With lots of good plotting, some inside jokes, and people you'd recognize, it makes for a enjoyable, memorable read.
This is one you'll want to read again.

This book is a great sequel to Stalking the Unicorn. I hope this becomes a series.

I've been a fan of Resnick's for a long, LONG time now, and I think he's at his most fun when he's chronicling the adventures of Detective John Mallory.

This was a fun, fast-paced story. Using a "24" style story telling device ("i.e., this chapter takes place between 2:37 AM and 3:12 AM") it's always interesting. John runs across the most amazing characters in his quest to solve a murder where the primary suspect is an ancient vampire.

An excellent read....highly recommended.

Ridiculous could be used as a one word summary for this book. Stalking the Vampire is a pure comedy that is set in a fantastical New York that has vampires and every other form of fairy tale beasts such as goblins exists. The protagonist is a Private Investigator named John Justin Mallory and his partner's nephew was killed by a vampire on a ship ride to New York. The tale is the adventure of Mallory and his gang that tries to hunt down this vampire. The idea and adventure isn't that bad, but the comedy is. Every single sentence is encased in humor, and there are no serious lines throughout the tale. Now if you don't care for this type of humor you're out of luck, as I was. I almost gave up many times with this book, but I'm a glutton for punishment and I finally finished it. I'll never revisit this book nor try the other two that are in this series. Resnick's serious work is good, his comedy is often ridiculous and in the case of this book it is. I wouldn't recommend this drivel to anyone.

As a REALLY big fan of Mike Resnick's "Stalking the Unicorn" I was very much looking forward to this book, so much so that I even was willing to order the hardback edition. With all the high praise in the reviews here, how could I go wrong? Well, perhaps my tastes have changed since I read the original years ago, but about half way through this sequel I almost gave up on it ... something I rarely do with a novel. The writing is sophomoric, the humor is repetitive to the point of exasperation, and much of the sly cleverness is gone and replaced with truly silly puns and verbal gags. I am glad those of you who gave it such high ratings enjoyed the ride, but this reader is jumping ship.

Really 3 1/2 stars for just one particular reason, but I rounded it up because Peter Ganim does a great job, whether he is reading the dialogue of the tough guy Private Eye, John Justin Mallory, or the cat girl whose idea of a good time includes tormenting birds and other small helpless creatures-- really, she is laugh out loud funny as a character but very, very catlike.

Ok, now here is the only annoyance I found in the whole book-- Michael Resnick never met a dialogue tag he did like-- "he said" was said so many times I began to wonder if I could find his email address and beg him to do some editing. In fact, I think a lot of authors would benefit from listening to their books being read aloud by a skilled reader. Nothing makes a writing tic plainer than hearing it.

Oh, yeah, and keep an eye out for the puns. They can sneak up on you quicker than a cat girl, and you can really hurt yourself laughing.

Private detective John Juston Mallory is settling down for a boring all-hallowed eve when his partner is attacked by her own nephew. Rupert has recently arrived from Europe...complete with fang scars on his neck. At first, it looks like Rupert is the problem, but when the nephew ends up murdered, Mallory, along with his talking feline 'pet,' a vampire scared of everything, and a frustrated mystery author who wants to see how real detecting happens and is continually disappointed when it doesn't match his fiction, set off in search of one of the most dangerous vampires in the world.

Mallory's investigation takes him through an alternate New York where Madison Square is a circle, where the tallest building is the Vampire State Building, and where the wrong turn can take the unsuspecting to a whole set of streets that don't exist on the map. Worst of all, everyone he meets suggests to Mallory that the smartest thing he can do is to fail. Because if he ever catches his vampire, the hunter is likely to become the victim.

Author Mike Resnick has a good time playing with the vampire myth and with the punny alternate New York he creates.Fans of genre fiction will snicker along with Resnick as he explains about all romance heroes being vampires (pretty much true over the past five years or so), and mystifies the author-character with a protagonist who doesn't use his fists to drive answers from unwilling badguys and doesn't bed a new woman every five pages.

I enjoyed the humor and Resnick's observations about the world of reality and of fiction. Still, although STALKING THE VAMPIRE is a short novel, it was running a little thin by the time I reached the end. But Resnick wrapped things up cleverly, even adding an excerpt of the version of the story created by the writer/sidekick.

His partner's nephew has been murdered and his partner attacked on the biggest night of the year. What does any self-respecting detective do in a situation like this? The cops have enough to do with the drunken revellers, so it's down to John J. Mallory, Felina, and some new found friends to find out whodunit. But is the Grundy involved, and on whose side? Did I mention that the murderer is a vampire, as is the new found friend? What about Felina being the the office cat, with attitude and a taste for vampires? And the Grundy is the most powerful demon on the East Coast?

Mallory is an old school detective in a Manhattan of goblins who fence garbage and try to pimp anything, cat people who alternate between office pets and sidekicks but will always stop for a snack, dragons who write, vampires who are fond of tomato juice, and a host of other unlikely allies, adversaries, and passing oddities.

This sequel to "Stalking the Unicorn" isn't quite as smooth, but does carry the reader down some odd alleys.

Great fun, and leaves the reader antsy for the next one!

E. M. Van Court

Freelance detective John Justin Mallory returns in Stalking the Vampire: A Fable of Tonight, the long-awaited sequel to veteran fantasy and sci-fi author Mike Resnick's Stalking the Unicorn. Mallory has now had ample time to become familiar with his new home of an alternate-universe Manhattan, where goblins are always trying to hawk useless wares, the street directions change if you look at them the wrong way, undead horrors are people too, and a demon responsible for most of the suffering in the world considers Mallory the next best thing to a personal friend (the view is not exactly mutual). Now, a vampire - a vicious, murdering vampire, not one of the more laid-back, five-to-nine working stiffs - has targeted Mallory's partner's nephew, and Mallory has to find and stop the fiend before All Hallows' Eve comes to a close! Aided by the morally ambiguous catgirl Felina, the short and selfish vampire Bats McGuire, and wannabe best-selling mystery writer dragon Nathan ("Scaly Jim" to no one but himself), Mallory must pit his brain against undead brawn that's at least seventeen times stronger than human brawn! Written in a flippantly humorous style perfect for bringing to life a city filled with thousands of fantastic distractions, Stalking the Vampire: A Fable of Tonight is enthusiastically recommended to fans of fantasy, humor, and mystery.