Francis James Franklin

The three stars are due more to my comfort (or lack of comfort) level with the extreme violence and sexual content. Reading it reminded me of how I felt when I tried to watch the Saw and Hostel movies and just could not finish.

A dark and disturbing novel that I should have deleted upon finishing the first chapter, but didn't, Suzie and The Monsters is oddly compelling, so much so it's like I was reading it against my will.

The main character herself goes way beyond the anti-hero archetype and does absolutely horrible things, but when she finds herself in the middle of another girl's disappearance, it seems like she might just be the right person to help.

Suzie's also a vampire who spends way too much on shoes and has done pretty much everything under the sun (except when the Sun is actually out) to ever be squeamish about life. Her personal life goes back centuries and the author does a good job of linking things to real historical events and people.

She uses her stealthy vampire skills to hypnotize men to get past check points at various places she's trying to break in along the way. This, weirdly enough, is not too troublesome a behavior since most of the men she encounters are pretty nefarious themselves.

It's so complicated and weird I'm not sure I can even explain. When I first downloaded the novel for free, I thought it was about a rock group called Suzie and the Monsters; once I realized it wasn't, it too late. I was hooked. I'm never ever hitting one-click on Amazon again when I'm under the influence of Nyquil.

Suzie has almost no scruples and so much of the plot made me extremely uneasy, yet I kept reading because Suzie's iTunes play list is unbelievably good and I wanted to keep track of all the songs.

I do not particularly like the book itself (though the writing's decent enough) but I've already added many of the songs Suzie Kew (yes, that's her full fake name) listens to as she either moonlights at a strip club or jogs with her iPod.

If not for Suzy Kew, I'd have no idea there's a samba version of "The Pink Panther," (also check out Mancini's Meglio Stasera) that there was a ridiculously (and shamefully) likable song in the early 90s called "People Are Still Having Sex" or that vampires (at least in this case) have amazing taste in classical music (Suzie's partial to Sviatoslav Richter's take on Schubert's Piano Sonata #19.)

I could never personally recommend this book (it's just so polar opposite of what I like) but I can see that it might be appealing to people who walk on the dark side.

p.s. I just have to add that, thanks to Francis James Franklin's terrific allusions to both obscure and more well-known titles, finding out about an eighteenth century book called The Life and Times of Tomcat Murr by E.T Hoffman is something for which I'm truly glad and grateful! :)… (lisätietoja)