Book Review – Night Rising

Author: Chris Marie Green
Publisher: ACE
Binding: Paperback
Publication Date: February 2007

Night Rising is an engaging story with equal parts detective novel, paranormal romance and vampire hunting. Dawn Madison, movie stuntwoman, has traveled to LA because her father has disappeared. While she has never been extremely close to him, he is her only family. The investigative agency for whom he worked contacted Dawn when her father was discovered as missing. They want her help in the search for Frank. So, now she has traveled to LA, one of her least favorite places, because she believes she might be of some help.

The agency, Limpet and Associates, is a little out of the ordinary when it comes to employees. She first meets Kiko at the door. Kiko is a mind-reading dwarf. Then it is on to meet Breisi the feisty gadget guru who seems to dislike Dawn on sight. The oddest of the group is Mr. Limpet himself, who only allows people to hear his voice, never to see him.

After an initial chance to get to know this odd little group, she is immediately asked to join them in the search for Frank, her father. Frank was an employee of Limpet and Associates and apparently disappeared while on assignment. While the agency seems to be telling her the truth, Dawn also senses that there is a lot that isn’t being said. Once she gets a chance to ride along on an investigation, she understands why there is so much that they don’t like to talk about. It seems that LA is infested with vampires and other such strange beasts and they don’t want to be found. It is this search for the vampires that has caused Frank to disappear and now Dawn is in the middle of it.

While there are some parts of the story that strained my probability meter, I was intrigued enough to pass those by and to keep reading. Additionally, Green added in some odd little erotic scenes that would fit right in to her normal range of books, though they seemed a bit out of place in this one. I can understand that having an underlying sexual tension between two characters that would give a little spice to many scenes and cause a reader to want to know what will happen next; sometimes a little may be too much. In this case, my opinion is that they were overly erotic for the circumstances. However, while I found them a bit over the top plot wise, I’m quite sure that many of her readers will find these little vignettes to be the best parts of the story.

Chris Marie Green has created a plausible and realistic vampire society and sympathetic characters that the reader would like to know more about. These kept me reading and will most likely make me want to read any sequels that come about. Thus I’m quite sure that her next book in the series will be snapped up quite quickly. Besides, the readers will at least want to know more about the strange Mr. Limpet and why he will not or can not show his face.

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