Customer Reviews

The Winter Man

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I found it to be extremely well detailed on the locations of Washington, DC and surrounding areas, keeping the city alive for me while reading. Nicki seems real and the twist on vampirism in the story is very good. The 'Dracula' syndrom is broken. The story flows well and keeps you turning pages in an attempt to figure out who the 'Winter Man' actually is. I made time to read--I had to know! It is a murder mystery with a very capable sleuth--move over Columbo. Maybe vampires do exist--Denise Vitola makes you think so!

This is a well written, easy to read novel. Nicki Chim is forensic hematologist (a specialist in blood), who works on contract for various people, including the police department in washington DC.

This book chronicles both the investigation into a serial killer called 'the winter man' and Nicki's private life which is getting more complicated than she would like. The characters are believable and the author has well thought out her sub-culture of vampires in the modern world without going into obessive detail.

If you like a good mystery and run across a second hand copy of this book it's worth picking up and reading. The fact that Nicki is a vampire is in many ways almost incidental to the story, it's just something she has to 'live' with and work around.

Seeing anything written by Denise Vitola become available makes my mouth water. Everything I've read by her has been a delicious bite of pleasure. She is a mistress of skillful weaving of words and I'm licking my lips in anticipation of reading this one! If you haven't read her other books, you should. If this is your first Vitola, I warn you that you will be addicted if you enjoy the vampire genre. She writes, you'll drool.

Nicki Chim is a small unassuming Asian woman and a forensics expert. She also happens to be a vampire. Her current consulting job with the Washington DC police has her on the track of a serial killer dubbed The Winter Man because he strikes during snowfalls.

Nicki's vampirism and that of her fellows (known as hematoman) makes for very interesting reading. Few vampire tales have ever given plausible explanations for vampire physiognomy but this one does.

While reading the book it becomes obvious that the author was hoping to do more stories with these characters and her vampire society but this is the only one so far. Vitola made a hit with her Ty Merrick werewolf stories instead (Quantum Moon, Opalite Moon, The Radon File, etc.).

The mystery is fairly well done although the final solution was rather cheap (but I won't give it away). I was also a little disappointed to not find out why the Winter Man used snowstorms (a quick comment at the end lets us know that there must have been many more killings than were suspected).

All in all a pretty good book and I am sorry there are no more in the series. But fans of the Ty Merrick tales should like this one. Truly original.

Nickie Chim is a "hemotoman" - her very own coinage for "vampire." She's been a vampire for around 90 years and during that time decided to parley her interest in blood - and forensic lab equivalent ability to taste the chemicals in blood - into a business as a consulting forensic examiner. She is also the head of her "clan" - the family like unit that hemotomans form under an "alpha male/female" leader - she has a gambling problem and her longest vampire friend and lover is going through a "mid-life crisis."

She also has to crack a serial killer mystery before he strikes again and excises the pituitary gland from the brain of his next victim during the next snow fall, so the clock is ticking and her personal issues aren't helping her get any closer to cracking the mystery.

I gave this book four stars, but I would actually rate it somewhere between "it's ok" and "I like it." The mystery isn't much of one since we are given two suspects with the same last name at an early point in the book, and we are able to rule out one of them not too long after. The real mystery seems to be (a) what is the killer's motivation and (b) how can they find him before the next snow fall. This last task seems frustratingly simple since he keeps getting reported as being seen at various locations that Nickie visits.

Denise Vitola is an excellent writer. I have read two of her "Moon" stories and her writing flows quite nicely. She also has a talent for "location." I am captivated by the "Humanitarian" dystopia she describes in her "Moon" stories, which for me seems to be as interesting a feature as her characters.

In "Winter Man," Vitola's apparent knowledge of Washington, D.C. is used to good effect. I had the feeling that I could have followed Chim's movements through the city.

The Hemotoman culture suggested a depth beyond that which we were told about in the book. We learned very little about how Nickie or her clan members became vampires or how these vampires seem to be integrated into a human culture without much notice. Vitola worked in a nice conceit about a "vampire mid-life crisis" that comes on sometime into a vampire's fourth century upon the realization that eternity is a long time.

My biggest problem with the book was my confict between rooting for Nickie as a pursuer of the evil Winter Man and feeling repulsed by her casual attitude toward killing humans. I noticed that in the book, the Winter Man racked up a body count of four or five victims; Nickie racked up a similar body count of unnamed, trivial humans who she killed when she was high on epinephrine or tense or just hungry. Likwise, one of Nickie's clan members kills a young woman in her house, and the big issue this generates is, what should be done with the body? Unlike the Winter Man's victims, who had names and histories, Nickie mentions off-hand how she took down two victims in Georgetown and one on the way home from some part of her case. The victims are unnamed and, apparently, caught her attention at the wrong time for them. Were they drug-pushers, doctors, mothers, grad students? Who knows? It's not important to Nickie, or Vitola, it seems.

And, so I wonder if Vitola's point was to not have the monster that Nickie is get in the way of our rooting for her? Or what seems more likely, was Vitola's point to tell us that Nickie is a monster - and her callous indifference to those whom she kills is how Nickie sees the world. Nickie helps the police catch killers as part of her protective coloration, not because she feels any condemnation of those killers or empathy for the victims. That latter interpretation is hinted at the end of the story when Nickie confronts the Winter Man.

Also, and although it is not central to the mystery of the book, the last paragraph of the story was the most startling, and jerked my estimation of the book up by a few notches.

So, my rating is around 3.5 stars because I'm conflicted about whether I like Nickie Chim. I don't think I do, but I would read another Nickie Chim book because this one gave me entertainment value for my money.

I read Winter Man and was hooked. Not only Ms. Chan sinks her teeth into you, Ms. Vitola does too. She has woven a great tale of vampirism in today's society. I especially enjoyed the details of D.C. having lived there a few years; I could visualize the locations which enhanced the reading. Once you finish this book, you will want to check out other books by Ms. Vitola. What more can I say about Winter Man? Read it, you won't be sorry.