I picked up The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires while visiting my niece in Charleston, South Carolina earlier this month. I read My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix a few years ago, and loved the horror mixed with 80s nostalgia. I stopped in to Blue Bicycle Books, the local Charleston bookstore, where they had a whole wall dedicated to local authors. I didn’t realize Hendrix was a Charleston native but they had a pile of his books and being a vampire fan I gave this one a look and read the foreword. When Hendrix described it not as a sequel to Exorcism, but a complement, my interest was piqued. He went on to say that while Exorcism was from the teenage point-of-view, and thusly had clueless parents, he wanted to write a horror novel where the mothers got their say. And specifically, to pit his mom against Dracula. Sold! 

/Shortly after beginning the book I texted my niece (who had already read it) and said that there were parts I was finding terrifying, and others horrifying. And those sentiments did not change as I read, although I did add infuriating to the mix, because the husbands in this, well … let’s just say cluelessness is the least of their faults. 

Hendrix plays with the concept of the vampire a bit and also adds in the element of true crime (and the seeming fascination of a large number of women with the genre) as well as the mix of Southern sensibilities, both good (neighborliness, community) and ill (racism, sexism, fascination with violence, religious superiority–OK those are all American issues, not solely for the southern states, but *at least in my experience* having lived in both southern and northern states, there’s a certain type of all of those things that you really only find in the South.) There are humorous parts to the book, but overall it’s really very dark and explores some serious issues, using the vampire and his proclivities as a way of pointing out the nastiness that’s covered up by all those Southern niceties.

(One book that I’ve now borrowed from the library thanks to it being featured in this book is Ann Rule’s The Stranger Beside Me. I had no idea she worked alongside Ted Bundy and consequently wrote about the experience.)