Suckers [Hardcover]

Anne Billson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1993

Vampires with an attitude--in a witty tale of modern terror from a rising young British writer. Dora, a savvy and cynical creative consultant, takes on her nemesis, Violet, who has somehow recovered from being chopped into little pieces and is now generating insatiable desires. Excerpted in Granta.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Yet another would-be satire of London's media swarm, this debut novel--which inexplicably caused Billson to be named among Britain's best young novelists earlier this year--is a tediously arch farrago whose less-than-inspired central conceit quickly wears thin. Magazine consultant Dora Vale and her erstwhile lover Duncan Fender have a creepy feeling that the vampire, Violet Westron, whom they had chopped into small pieces 13 years before, has returned as head of a multinational media conglomerate with designs on world domination. Of course it's true, and soon Dora finds herself alone against evil forces. Related in glib journalese, Billson's trite observations on contemporary pop culture are never toothsome or original enough to animate her moribund plot. Since Dracula and his ilk have always served as quite self-conscious symbols of cultural anxiety, the end-of-the-millennium-psychosis-blues that Suckers aspires to remain obdurately flat. Nasty and tasteless without being particularly shocking, silly without being very funny, the novel is--sharpened stakes and fangs notwithstanding--pointless and suprisingly lacking in bite; Suckers stands in sore need of a transfusion.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This British first novel tells the story of a very modern, very hip vampire hunter: Dora Vale, a cynical creative consultant who has managed to maintain a hopeful friendship with the love of her life, Duncan, despite his marriage to air-brained model Lulu and his infatuation with a 300-year-old beauty called Violet. Thirteen years ago, Dora and Duncan drove a stake through Violet's heart, but now she has returned, with an entire vampire network behind her. Weary of persecution, the bloodsuckers have decided to make England "a haven where they can live and hunt in safety... just a smoothly run economy and specialized catering facilities." Hard-boiled Dora smart-mouths her way through one dangerous confrontation after another as she tries to save England and rescue the unworthy Duncan from a seduction for which he seems all too eager. Deliciously skewering the art and business scenes as well as the yuppies who are the vampires' prime targets, this surprisingly down-to-earth supernatural romp is highly recommended.
- A.M.B. Amantia, Population Action International, Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 312 pages
• Publisher: Atheneum; 1St Edition edition (October 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 068912189X
• ISBN-13: 978-0689121890
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,081,064 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Bridget Jones, Vampire Hunter, June 12, 2000

By 

Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Suckers (Hardcover)

I picked this one up figuring it'd be a quick, superflouous read that would help me increase the hit rate this year and not spend too much time floating around in my skull. And that's exactly what I got, though I didn't expect it to be quite so good. Billson is a writer of the McInerney/Ellis/Janowitz stripe, and must have gotten this MS. in just before the cutoff for eighties-style fiction guillotined across the publishing landscape. However, Billson keeps the greed-is-good atmosphere to just that-- an atmosphere. When she needs to drop names, she makes them up rather than sounding like an overworked Sharper Image catalog, as most of her contemporaries do.

The story centers around Duncan and Dora, a not-quite-couple who, thirteen years ago, were part of a love triangle with a vampire. The vampire was found out, staked, dismembered, and scattered. Probalem is... she seems to be back, under another name and with a whole lot more power, as the head of a publishing empire. What's worse, the publishing empire happens to run a major fashion magazine... and so everyone starts dressing, looking, sounding, and otherwise behaving like vampires. It's comedy, but it's black comedy of the blackest stripe. Billson's publishers were going for the heavy-lit crowd, and so the blurbs on the jacket are from writers like Salman Rushdie instead of Stpehen King. And, oddly, despite this being a comedy/horror novel with a decidedly eighties bent... it might not be too out of place in the heavy-lit world. Billson's writing is crisp, while of that same easy-to-read stripe that distinguishes less heavily-marketed horror novels. Her satire, both of the vampire-novel genre and of the time, is spot-on.

If you like vampires, hey, it's worth a couple of days. ***

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's a great vampire book!, January 23, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Suckers (Hardcover)

This is definitely one of those vampire books for the Dr. Van Helsings and romantics of the world. The atmosphere is very dark as it should be. The characters, Dora, Duncan Fender, Violet, and Lulu are a few of those who can be found in a warped love triangle, mortals vs. vampires. Who will win Duncan"s heart? Let's not forget Multigolm Corp. as it seems to be the center of this whole thing. So follow the vampire hunter in London on an adventure of love, power, and beautiful vampires.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Vampirism = consumerism writ large, May 25, 2002

By 

F. J. Harvey "Cricket ,country music and a go... (Birmingham England) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Suckers (Hardcover)

Yuppiea as vampires in thrall to a multi-national corporation,gradually taking over London from their Docklands base.They wear black,drink blood from their local hostelry and supplement it by exsanguinating passing tourists in messy fashion.
While not short of the odd visceral shock with vividly rendered dismemberings the prevailing mood is dark comedy with a wit as black as pitch.
The narrator is Dora,a "Creative Consulatant" for advertising agencies(meaning she invents survey results and doctors the findings--something I suspect,indeed know, is done all the time).When she and her friend Duncan ,for whom she has long nursed a wholly unrequited passion where menaced some years earlier by an opera loving vampire named Violet they killes her and scattered the dismembered body to all parts of London.They are somewhat taken aback to discover that Violet has not only returned from the netherworld but is now the head of a multinational conglomerate which is taking over the advertising and media industries
Can Dora stop the tide of the designer nosferatu or will the whole land be taken over by people resembling extras from a Robert Palmer video?

Tghe real delight of the book is Dora and we see through her eyes aspects of metropolitan life that helped make the 1980's the worst post war decade by a country mile-yuppies,penniless and pretentious art students,self centredness on an Olympian scale,the growth of the century's most pernicious practices -marketing and saturation advertising.(The devil does not look like Liz Hurley in Bedazzled;the spawn of Satan being an ad man or woman with no language other than jargon)

The vampire code is efficiency and humanity must battle the accountants and number crunchers to maintain a toehold on the mountain of society.
Yes Dora is a real heroine.Cynical.Amoral.Dishonest.But with a spark of decency and brio.Van Helsing meets Cindi Lauper.

It is not a comfortable book and adherents of the traditional vampire fare may well not agree but I like its spirit and mordaunt edge.....