The Hanged Man by P.N. Elrod

I'm not much of a historian, but I'm fairly certain that Queen Victoria did not, in fact, establish a secret corps of psychics to help her govern her empire, and to assist Scotland Yard investigations. However, P.N. Elrod takes the idea and runs with it rather well, producing a fun and entertaining tale, flavored with bits of darkness and drama.


Lady Alex is one of Her Majesty's psychics, called in to investigate the apparent suicide of a "snake oil" salesman, Dr. Kemp. She arrives to discover a number of irregularities in the crime scene which make it obviously a homicide, and to ascertain that some sort of supernatural entity may have been involved, before discovering that the victim is actually her own father, in mufti.


She is immediately removed from the investigation by her superiors, but the crime doesn't seem to want to let her go, and she very nearly becomes the next victim. Despite clear orders to stay out of trouble, she is simply not the type of person to sit quietly and wait for others in the psychic service to get results, and so she, and her bodyguard, Lieutenant Brook, seem to rush headlong from one frying pan into subsequent fires, while unraveling a plot that could shake the foundations of the British empire.


Rather looking forward to another installment, should Elrod choose to write some.

Dark Road Rising by P.N. Elrod

Dark Road Rising appears to be the final novel in the Vampire Files series by Elrod. There may be a novella or short story (seen on Goodreads) out there, but I'm guessing it will be a bit tough to locate. There are a number of loose ends from earlier books to be wrapped up in this novel, and for the most part they get taken care of by the end.

The New York mob thinks that Whitey Kroun is dead, killed in a car bomb attack. They send some of their top enforcers, who were friends with Kroun, down to Chicago to investigate and punish those responsible, whom they perceive to be Jack. Whitey, who survived due to the fact that he is also a vampire, would rather remain dead and get out of the mob the only way possible, but in order to save Jack's life, he has to reveal that he has survived the blast.

Jack wants to find out more from Whitey about "life" as a vampire, but we come to realize that Whitey has some serious gaps in his memory, and his knowledge of vampiric abilities is spotty, and he seems to have lost any recollection of how he became one. Whitey was a truly nasty piece of work when he was truly alive, but now as an undead he seems to be pretty decent, with a reluctance to kill in the unemotional way that made him a great mob enforcer. He drags Jack along as he tries to find out more about his past, and what he uncovers there is truly horrifying.

It seemed a little odd that Jack started out as a pretty decent guy, and remained much the same after his transformation, while Whitey began as a monster, but was much improved after death. Perhaps it had something to do with the bullet in his head which he never was able to get rid of, which also keeps him from vanishing like Jack does.

A pretty good story to close out the saga, while leaving the door open for further adventures with Jack & Bobbi in Hollywood someday.

Song in the Dark by P.N. Elrod

Jack has been suffering some serious ill effects from his torture by Hog Bristow, blinding headaches when he attempts to hypnotize someone, panic attacks, and other PTSD-type symptoms. He's also lost control of his feeding a couple of times (fortunately only on cattle) and has become aware of his nearly overwhelming desire to enjoy the pleasures of taking human blood instead of animals'. Charles, his best friend, and Bobbi, his girlfriend, are walking on eggshells around him, trying to help him when he won't even admit that he's got problems.

Into this situation, throw the additional complication of Gordy getting shot, and having to hide out while he recovers, putting Jack in charge of his criminal enterprise temporarily. New York has sent Whitey Kroun to Chicago to investigate the death of Hog Bristow at Jack's hands, and everyone is certain that Kroun will simply decide that Jack must "pay" for his transgression. But Jack forces himself nearly to the brink of disaster by using his hypnotic powers to convince Kroun to leave him in charge until Gordy gets well, that Hog got only what he had coming, and that he and Whitey are good friends.

The unexpected side effect of this is that Jack gains a sidekick, or so it seems, when Whitey hangs around and spends his time hanging out with Jack at his nightclub, Lady Crymsyn. Some of Gordy's henchmen aren't too thrilled with Jack's takeover, and when he steps in to stop the beating of a singer with big gambling debts, Alan Caine, he earns the enmity of the thug involved, Hoyle. Hoyle and his buddies retaliate against Jack, kidnapping him and taking him to the woods for a beating, but Jack turns the tables, and delivers his own style of beatdown, due to his vampire strength. Unfortunately, his squeamishness when it comes to killing causes him to leave the boys alive, and they continue to plague him throughout the rest of the book.

When Caine's strangled body turns up in his dressing room soon after, Jack and Whitey team up to keep the cops out of things, and to try to find out who really killed the man, who was not as popular with all the folks he owed money to as he was with the ladies, except for his ex-wife, who is on the short list of suspects, owing her many months of back-alimony.

Jack's fight against his demons, inner and outer, makes an interesting tale with a very surprising twist at the end.

Cold Streets by P.N. Elrod

It all starts with a kidnapping. A group of thugs kidnap the mentally handicapped daughter of a society matron, so Escott and Jack ride to the rescue. Jack uses his ability to ride along unseen in the vehicle that picks up the ransom money to track the kidnappers' gang back to the farmhouse where they are holding he girl, incapacitates the men, then hauls them off to the police station, hypnotized into giving full confessions, and takes the girl home to her mother. Joy all the way around.

Except that the ringleader of the kidnappers is a sociopath, and there are two categories of people upon whom Jack's hypnotic talents fail to work - drunks and crazies. So with the help of some sleazy lawyers and loyal friends, the leader, Dugan, gets bailed out of jail and appears to be on the road to acquital. Jack and Escott won't tolerate this, so a good deal of the novel is spent trying to send Dugan to jail instead of letting him expose Jack as a vampire - he wasn't hypnotized, and he remembers everything he saw.

On the gangland side of things, the bosses in New York are a little worried about revenues being down in Chicago, so they send one of their more brutal bosses, Hog Bristol, down to find out why, and to take over the territory from Gordy if he doesn't get satisfactory answers. Of course, Hog's a jerk, and nothing Gordy says will stop him from taking over Chicago. When either Hog or one of his men guns Gordy down in the street, Jack ends up taking over Gordy's operation temporarily to keep a New York takeover at bay.

It all ends up in a brutal scene after Jack is caught unaware by Bristol and his men, while he's chatting with a now captive Dugan. Again, I ask how in the world a vampire whose hearing is so acute he can eavesdrop on conversations across the room, and hear the changes in the heart rate of a blackjack dealer can let three goons get the drop on him. In the end, to escape the slaughterhouse where Bristol takes Jack to be tortured, Jack has to slip over the edge into madness for a time. We'll see in the next book if he's able to ever recover from his ordeal and what he had to do to survive.

Lady Crymsyn by P.N. Elrod

 Jack has, with Gordy's help, managed to launder the money he appropriated a couple of books back, from Frank Paco's embezzlement from the mob, and is finally realizing his dream of opening up his own night club, where Bobbi can headline until she gets noticed enough to head to Hollywood and be a movie star. As the story begins, he is just days away from opening up Lady Crymsyn, which will be a very high class joint - without the usual mob-run and protected casino, only the legal vices allowed.

A snag develops when the workers remodeling the basement of the building find a corpse, walled up to die alone - a woman in a bright red gown. Ever the white knight, Jack decides it's his responsibility to find out who she was and who was responsible for her murder, and to bring them to justice, if possible. All of this in his spare time while trying to hire staff, oversee construction, and get his club open on time.

The early trail leads to the usual suspects, the gangsters and their molls - or frails - who had something to do with the building under previous ownership. The old owner of the club was killed in a grenade attack, and the perpetrators were never caught, either, so perhaps Fleming can kill two birds with one stone here. This one has some fantastic twists towards the end, and takes us along on an unexpected narrative journey.

The only problem I have with the series at this point is that I would think that Jack would have figured out by now not to turn his back on henchmen carrying weapons, especially wooden ones that can actually knock him down and out for a significant time period. His squeamishness about not beating up or killing thugs is a huge handicap - he needs to just get over it.

The Dark Sleep by P.N. Elrod

When it looks as if Jack's long time girlfriend, Bobbi, may get an opportunity to impress some folks with Hollywood connections, he has mixed feelings. He loves her and wants her to succeed, but can hardly bear the thought of losing her to tinseltown. When one of them, a radio show host named Archy Grant gives her an opportunity to appear on his show, but there are some sexual strings attached, his feelings are not in doubt at all. Bobbi can be trusted not to fall for such enticements, and will probably be the one who plays rather than getting played, but Jack must resist the temptation to do something drastic about Archy's attentions.

Jack and Charles Escott are involved at the same time with attempting to recover some writings (they think they are love letters) that a wealthy socialite wants her former low brow lover to return, before they become an embarassment and derail her wedding to a foreign prince charming. The twist this subplot takes at the end is simply marvelous.

The main plot also takes an odd twist or two, as we finally get to learn about some of Escott's personal demons. I am starting to get a little irritated about how Jack never seems to keep an eye out for people sneaking up on him with a club, cosh, or cane. For someone who is able to hear the changes in the heartbeat of a blackjack dealer and get an advantage on the house odds, he is curiously unable to notice the heartbeat of someone who is pumped full of adrenaline and about to whack him on the head.

Another decent read from Elrod.

A Chill in the Blood by P.N. Elrod

So, Jack has survived the showdown with the gangster boss, Kyler, and now he gets to deal with the three-way free-for-all between Frank Paco's daughter, Angela, the hotshot mobster sent down from New York to settle things, Sean Sullivan, and Gordy, Jack's friend and ally who might be gunning for a bigger piece of the action himself. To further complicate matters, Escott introduces Fleming to a group of FBI agents (think Untouchables-style) who want to clean up the gangs in Chicago, no matter what the cost. Stir in a few crooked cops and you've got a recipe for utter chaos!

Around this point in the series, it becomes fairly clear that Jack's vampire abilities could make most of the conflicts in these books far too easy to resolve, if he's not limited in some way. So, Elrod has him a bit forgetful about making sure he's topped off with blood at all times, making him slow to recover and unable to think clearly when he's a quart low. She also pits him against adversaries who are so strong-willed that they're hard to hypnotize, and he discovers that drunks are also immune to his powers, and she sets up situations where he's unable to arrange a solo encounter with the people he needs to influence the most, so he has to settle for very quick "shots" of imposing his will on them. Perhaps this will develop his character's use of his powers into something more resembling a scalpel than a sledgehammer eventually. He also struggles with his basic "goodness", despite being undead, and is unwilling to just murder the gangsters that are standing in his way, no matter how despicable they are.

So, it seems that we'll see some more personal growth out of Jack. Elrod also begins to flesh out some of the bit players in this drama, like Shoe Coldfied, the black gangster who is another friend and ally of Escott and Fleming's, and we get a sense that there's a big backstory for Escott, too.

Another fun adventure in gangland Chicago.

Blood on the Water by P.N. Elrod

The action continues non-stop from Fire in the Blood. Jack briefly regroups, making sure that Bobbi is safely tucked away, so that the gangster, Kyler, can't use her as leverage against him. A meeting with Kyler to swap the purloined necklace for safety turns into a betrayal when Kyler sets Jack up to take the fall with the police, but Fleming's vampire skills get him out of the situation again.

The plot gets quite a bit more complicated when Jack encounters a whole new faction of goons while on his way to deal with Kyler once and for all. It turns out that Frank Paco's daughter, Angela, has been running what's left of his organization in Frank's name "until her father gets better", and she has Fleming kidnapped to find out what he has to do with Kyler. Jack escapes her clutches, only to return later to rescue Escott, the next kidnap victim. Jack continues to struggle, in this novel, with his moral dilemma regarding losing control while hypnotizing others and feeding on them nearly to their destruction.

Treachery, double-dealing and distrust seem to be the order of the day...er, night, in this novel, as all the players except Jack and his buddies switch sides, lie, cheat and steal from one another. Again, the narrative just ends abruptly, only to be continued in the next book. Elrod had a story to tell, and couldn't be bothered to slow down for a transitional scene when her alloted pages ran out. Just happy she didn't like to leave things on a cliff hanger.

Fire in the Blood by P.N. Elrod

Jack and Charles have gained some small fame for their skill in tricky investigations, so it's no surprise when they are hired by a wealthy man, Sebastian Pierce, to try to find out what has become of an heirloom  ruby and diamond bracelet stolen by one of his daughter, Marian's fast crowd of friends. Marian is a little faster than her daddy expects, and Jack finds this out on the first night of their hunt when she makes a daring play for him, just before her very jealous boyfriend walks in on them. With his vampire strength, Jack has no problem dealing with a jealous lover, especially paired with his nosferatu persuasive skills.

One little passage that readers who are not of a certain age will not understand:
"I hit the period and debated whether to turn it into an exclamation point...I backspaced, tapped the apostrophe key, and rolled out the sheet, adding it to the stack of deathless prose next to my portable."
You had to have been there to get it.

But the thief, McAlister, turns out to be more than just a thief. He and his accomplice have set up a basic blackmail racket - he seduces women of means, while his partner takes pictures, which are then used to extort money from the women. When he leads Jack and Charles on a hot chase through town, then turns up messily dead, the trail rapidly leads away from the usual suspects of family and close friends, deeper into Chicago's underworld - the mundane sort.

Escott and Fleming have some messy misadventures as they confront a seemingly endless host of gangsters who either want the pictures or the stolen bracelet, which is worth about $15,000 (in the 1930s). I think this novel led Elrod down some alleys, herself, and ended up spanning two volumes, rather than fitting into the usual page count - the story in the next volume continues moments after this one ends. Things get darker before the dawn, here.

Art in the Blood by P.N. Elrod

When his girlfriend, Bobbi, invites Jack to a party at the home of a popular artist, he never imagines it will descend into anything more sinister than sarcasm and artsy chatter. Unfortunately, Jack isn't able to mind his own business when he overhears the beginning of a beating, triggered when one of the artists, Evan is caught cheating at dice by some local hoods. When he faces down Evan's assailants, he gets drawn farther into the affairs (some literal) of artists more than he had hoped.

When Evan's sister, Sandra, is killed shortly after that, Jack's suspicions immediately turn to some sort of revenge attempt either by the angry gamblers, or a debt collection gone horribly wrong, as it turns out Evan owes money to a few gangsters, as well. Things get even more complicated when Jack finds out that the first wife of the sister's boyfriend, Alex Adrian, committed suicide - or was it murder?

The deeper Fleming and his friend, Escott, delve into the situation, the more of a tangled web they discover. Not the most exciting one of these chronicles so far, but it explores Jack and Charles' crime-solving skills a bit, and sets up some situations for later on.

Bloodcircle by P. N. Elrod

In this third book in the Vampire Files series, Fleming and Escott use their latest leads to track down the fate of Jack's old lover, who turned him, Maureen. They find that she left a phone number where she could be reached in an emergency, belonging to an old neighbor, and that neighbor, in turn, leads them to the household of Emily Francher, wealthy spinster socialite, and her gentleman friend, Jonathan Barrett.

Barrett is wary of the duo when they arrive and begin asking questions, but he claims that he only saw Maureen briefly when she was escaping her sister, and that she spent the night at the Francher mansion, then left by cab the next morning without saying a word to him or anyone else. She has not been heard from since.

This story doesn't completely satisfy Jack and Charles, so they hang around town continue to make inquiries from the townsfolk, and Jack takes a sneaky reconnoiter around the place the following evening, eavesdropping on Barrett, Emily, and her ward, Laura, who seems to have a young woman's crush on Barrett, even though he and Emily are obviously lovers, and the couple have taken steps to bring Emily "life" after death.

When the pair take a ride with the cab driver who drove Maureen away from the mansion that day, they put him in serious danger, and shortly afterwards Jack stumbles upon the scene of a brutal attack on the poor, innocent fellow. Jack, himself, is blindsided when the attacker returns while he is trying to help the cabbie, and beaten so badly that the locals mistake him for truly dead, and he has to be rescued from the morgue by Charles before an autopsy is performed.

It becomes fairly obvious where this is all leading early on in the story, but our friends have to play the whole game to its bitter end.

Lifeblood by P.N. Elrod

In this book, we take time off from our regularly scheduled gangster programming to bring you some blasts from Jack's past that have returned to haunt him once more. While Jack is on an expedition to the old family homestead to bring back some more sacks of his native earth (to sleep on), he notices that he is being followed. When he confronts his pursuers, he finds out that they are a couple of fellows from New York City who know that he is a vampire, and are determined (a la Van Helsing) to slay the foul beast (Jack).

Unable to convince them of his general good will and honorable intentions, he tries several times to dissuade them non-violently, but they continue to pop up at the least convenient moments throughout the story.

Upon his return to Chicago, Fleming receives a message from an old woman, Gaylen, who turns out to be the sister of the vampiress who changed him (Maureen). The old lady fills in the blanks for him - and us - on how Maureen lived, died and became a vampire, but can shed no further light on Maureen's fate after her sudden disappearance.

Eventually, these two apparently disparate plot threads come violently together when Bobbi is kidnapped and one of the vampire hunters killed by Gaylen's allies, who demand that Jack turn them into vampires so that they, too, may live forever.

Bloodlist by P.N. Elrod

Bloodlist is the first in Elrod's Vampire Files series, which takes place in the late 1930s around Chicago. The tale begins on the shores of Lake Michigan, where we find our protagonist, Jack Fleming, being run down by a small-time gangster. He "survives" the attack, and we very quickly discover that the reason is that he is a vampire, recently turned. It's only about two-thirds of the way through the book that we get most of his back story - he had a love affair with a vampiress named Maureen, and exchanged blood with her, which left him able to rise again when he was tortured to death by gangsters just a few hours prior to the beginning of the story. His memories of his death are repressed, to begin with, but we eventually get the flashbacks that make things clear.

Fleming, while breathing, was an investigative reporter in New York. One of his informants, just before being inconveniently murdered, gave him a coded list full of information that several rival gangsters are willing to kill for, and Jack spends most of the story blundering about investigating what might have been in the list that was so important. Very early in the game, he makes the acquaintance of Charles Escott, a former actor who is presently employed as a private agent (P.I., in modern terms). Escott worms his way into Fleming's confidence and investigation, and the two of them rapidly become good friends, though it takes them some time to admit to it.

It's always interesting to compare which myths of the total vampire mythos make it into each author's interpretation. Elrod's vampires aren't affected by garlic or crosses, though Fleming thinks that perhaps those who are actually "evil" might fear the crucifix - Fleming, himself, calls his parents when he thinks of them, and sends home money to help them through the tough times of the Depression. No bat or wolf shape is available, but forming into a mist that can seep through cracks in the walls or even more solid walls is a handy thing for a vampire turned investigator. Fleming becomes violently ill when he consumes normal food or drink, but he's not limited to taking blood from humans, a trip to the Stockyards seems to tide him over, though he discovers that the "kick" from human blood and the orgasmic pleasure involved for vamp and victim are far superior to the blood of our four-footed friends.

So, in this novel, the scene is set in Gangsterland Chicago,  sidekick Escott befriended and glamorous moll Bobbi won. The first round of battle eliminates a layer of the Mob, and Jack begins to deal with the consequences and responsibilities of his new powers. We also get to meet some semi-permanent friends and allies in the underworld of Chi-town.

Dance of Death, by P.N. Elrod

Dance of Death, the fourth in P.N Elrod’s chronicles of Jonathan Barrett, is a ho-hum continuation of a series that started with great promise, but which will probably fade into mediocrity. The undead Jonathan Barrett and his “living only as sympathetic sidekick” relatives blunder their way through another couple of weeks of tawdry intrigue and gloomy adventure.


The enemies defeated in Death Masque rise again (though none so dramatically as Barrett) to cause him yet more trouble. We are also subjected too many times to scenes of Jonathan playing “horsey” with Richard, his bastard son by Clarinda, whom he now has been given to raise by Edmund, her oft-cuckolded husband, I suspect merely for the sole purpose of illustrating how deeply Jonathan loves the boy, so that we can sympathize with his deep spiritual anguish when the boy is kidnapped and held for ransom. Quite frankly, nothing we are shown about Richard’s character (spoiled little rich kid) through these expositions would have motivated me to dive into the ocean to save him from drowning.

We also finally see Barrett reunited with his lost vampiric love Nora. What a disappointment. Throughout the last couple of novels in the series, Elrod has raised the suspense level and dropped sinister hints regarding Nora’s disappearance, but when she comes back, it turns out she was with her aged aunt, taking the waters at Bath. Elrod breaks with vampirish lore in their reunion and allows the two to make love and to exchange blood, though the reunion could really have been made poignant and tragic by sticking to tradition and forcing them to settle for a passionate yet platonic eternity.

As always, Barrett keeps getting shot, stabbed, and clubbed into insensibility, then making a recovery after the villains have fled. No one ever seems to twig to the occult possibilities, possible because he predictably uses his hypnotic powers to erase suspicions. If I’d just seen someone shot or stabbed to death, who healed in the space of a few minutes, I think I’d protest rather loudly if his loyal cousin tried to take me in for a private conference. Feets, do your duty!

If you’ve been following the series, this one is worth the price in the used bookstores, but don’t blow full price for it, like I did.

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