BloodLaw - Book Review

Bloodlaw by Blaise Ramsay is a novel about an unfortunate man named Alastair Maddox, who is transformed into a vampire by a strange woman named Alexandra Delane. The story takes place in the windy city of Chicago during the roaring twenties.  If you love books about the mafia, vampires, alpha males, beautiful women, and stories told from multiple perspectives? Blaise Ramsay’s Bloodlaw has got you covered!  The book has sort of a horror feel to it as Ramsay describes Alastair digging himself out of his grave and learning to exist by avoiding sunlight and chowing down on fat Chicago rats.  Alastair has a mission; he wants to find the criminals who were responsible for his death. Adapting to his new persona is hard because he can hear the blood pumping in the living, and just the site of a human makes him salivate – but he controls himself. Low lives had also murdered his parents - is there a connection between these murders? What are the who’s and whys of the murders?  How will he deal with his girlfriend, Charlaine Ware, better known as Charlie? Will she accept him as a vampire?

Alastair scurries around Chicago, trying to adapt to his new life as an unhappy vampire. He hides out in shacks and in a mausoleum, trying to find a safe place for a good vampire to set up house without upsetting the living. He is quickly discovered by a man named Mason Downing, who eventually becomes his conduit to the living. Alastair had been an assistant district attorney prior to his untimely-death, and his first contact with Alexandra Delane happen during his tenure in that office. She fascinated him with her beauty and charm, but unfortunately, he quickly discovered that she was a murderer.

Ramsay weaves a tale together where the living accepts and assist this one vampire, as long as he doesn’t bite. Alastair continues his quest for the mobster that had him killed and who was proving to be a deadly adversary there in the windy city.  The name Falcone enters into the investigation, and Alastair feels like he might be getting closer to the person responsible for his death.

Bloodlaw is a pedal-to-the-metal, exquisitely written romp through the mean streets of Chicago’s prohibition days. Ramsay shows a propensity for snappy dialogue, perverse scenarios, a little satire, and oddball characters that will keep you hooked. You meet reporters, hookers, hoods, cops, and the dead.  It ends with a door opening into a new mystery that our vampire detective and his living associates will probably be solving in Ramsay’s next novel.