Customer Reviews

True Vampires: Blood-Sucking Killers Past and Present

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Ms. London has been called the Queen of the serial killer groupies for her "dating" several killers, and this poorly written book seems to have been thrown together. Little real analysis, doesn't even have a bibliography.

This book is appalling. The author does not seem to understand the difference between vampires and cannibals. There are virtually no "vampires" in this collection of sickening cannibalistic serial killers, let alone any "true vampires". I did not expect to read about "real vampires" since there are none in the true sense of the term but I did expect to find some correlation to vampirism. The "research" seems suspect since there are no notes let alone a bibliography. There are odd statements made like "putative vampire Boris Yeltsin". (?!) It also full of nonsensical theories that seem to say that anyone who wears black clothing and plays role playing games is susceptible to "media virus". So if I understand the thinking, nuns are vampires and people who play role playing games are too stupid to understand fact from fiction and will immediately become psychotic serial killers. I also find it odd that someone who seems to have such disdain for vampires and the lifestyle chose to feature drawings by Nicholas Claux - a convicted murderer from France who killed in the name of Satan. The author is a very confused woman indeed. She needs to do a lot more research before she writes such a biased and, quite frankly, ridiculous book. I did get quite a few laughs reading it at least.

While most true crime does not bother with references, their scope is more limited than 'True Vampires'. I thought this could only benefit from a bibliography since it is international and has so many cases. Otherwise, it is pulpish and just shock material. There is little flow to the writing and little organization. It seems to digress to non-vampiric sensational serial killers, like Ted Bunday saying "I feel like a vampire". Again, this is not high end literature, but the points above distract from reading the book.

True Crime books are a guilty pleasure for me. True Vampires is better than average as far as they go. The main theme in this is as much cannibalism as it is nerds who took their vampire role playing too serious and went overboard. Everything from murdering hillbilly vampire clans to a Japanese man who experimented with cannabilism while an exchange student in France. Because he was totally nuts he did his time in a mental institution in France and after a few years France released him to Japan thinking he would remain under lock and key there but because he was a nutter Japanese law allowed him to be released. The Japs being the warped bunch that they are made him a celebrity and gave him his own cooking show on television.

Ms.London can't write,period..Feral House,her publisher,has a long history of publishing items that are exploitative without being either informative or particularly readable,and"True Vampires"continues in this "tradition">Reading Ms.London's book is about the same as reading one of those tabloid newspapers usually found at supermarket check-out counters,and ,like the tabloids,it has equal credibility..
As for the content of"True Vampires" it has little or nothing to do with either vampires or truth,being instead a badly written tome on serial murderers with only a few exceptions..I suppose that in Ms.London's view the inclusion of a few pages on Vlad the impaler provides justification for calling this book"True Vampires"..i suppose that if i wrote a book about dirt and it included a page or two on pay toilets it would justify my calling the work"A History of the Latrine"..
DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THIS BOOK.