Fade Out by Rachel Caine

I promised in my review of the 6th Morganville Vampires book Carpe Corpus that I would try and get to the next book quicker and I am as good as my word.

A story arc finished in Carpe Corpus and as result the opening of Fade Out has a much more relaxed feel to it than the predecessors. It concerns Eve getting a leading role in a local production of A Streetcar Named Desire. What I found interesting about this is that it's directed by a vampire and one of the town's leading vampire power brokers Oliver has a role in it too.

Claire spends a lot of the early part of this book being an annoying teenager (because of her importance to the story, her kid genius status and the fact that she's attending university you tend to forget that she's only 17) because of Eve's friend Kim. She's right to worry about Kim, because the girl does have the potential to destroy the town, but Claire had it in for her before that was discovered.

This one works a lot more with the development of the characters and their relationships and it's a welcome change from the full on action of the previous few books. I read that in another review and like that reviewer I'm not the target market.

There was a lot of Myrnin and I really like him. It's hard not to like a vampire who keeps a pet spider he names Bob and wears bunny slippers with fangs around the place. There's also a lot of the homicidal Claire hating computer Ada and her attempts to kill Claire. I think it's the relationship with Myrnin that sets Ada off, she's never actively stalked anyone before, but she sees Myrnin as 'hers' and she is very jealous.

In order to get out of one bad situation Shane makes a pretty bad deal with another bunch of vampires and it's going to come back to bite (sorry couldn't resist) him and the rest of the non vampire gang in the future.

There were a couple of interesting revelations in this one about the background of the town and the characters. Richard Morrell (current mayor and brother of mean girl Monica) is one of two Morganville residents to have killed a vampire and not been executed for it. I like Richard and was hoping we'd find out more about that after it was dangled tantalisingly out there, but Richard didn't even appear. Sigh. Maybe in Kiss of Death.

The other one was exactly who Oliver is historically. The hints are his first name, the place he lived, the time he lived in and the age he was when he became a vampire. I know he's not described this way, but I keep seeing him as Eric Stonestreet (Cameron in Modern Family), so never picked up on his real identity before. Ada's also based on a real historical person, and it's entirely fitting and very clever.

I do hope there's some investigation of Richard's past in Kiss of Death and I've already started reading it.