The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires: The Lost Boys meets Fried Green Tomatoes in Grady Hendrix’s latest horror-thriller

After focusing on demonic possession (My Best Friend’s Exorcism) and a heavy metal take on the Robert Johnson and the devil mythos (We Sold Our Souls), horror novelist/screenwriter/excavator of lost paperback treasures Grady Hendrix returns with The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires (Quirk Books), a darkly thrilling story of a gang of suburban women facing off against a very different kind of vampire.

Hendrix returns to Charleston, South Carolina (also the setting for My Best Friend’s Exorcism) but moves the timeline from the ’80s up to the ’90s and shifts the focus from the teenagers of Exorcism to the adults, specifically Patricia Campbell, an over-worked mother whose one escape is her true-crime book club. One night Patricia is violently tacked by an elderly neighbour, which brings her into contact with the woman’s nephew, the charming James Harris. James adds a spark of excitement to Patricia’s life as she begins introducing him to her friends and family and inviting him into her home on a regular basis. But why does James have such a severe reaction to sunlight? And is his van the same one seen out in the woods where children have begun disappearing?

Hendrix takes the well-worn vampire tale and gives it a much-needed update, focusing on the sort of characters that are often only seen on the periphery in vampire fiction and films. The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires plays out like a mash-up of The Lost Boys and Fried Green Tomatoes; the focus is as much on the interpersonal dynamics between the women that make up the book club as it is on the encroaching terror of a vampire set loose in suburbia.

Patricia Campbell is one of the most well-realized characters in Hendrix’s work, which almost entirely focuses on strong women pitted against various forces of evil. When she begins to connect the dots and realize that her new friend is more than he appears to be, her friends and family think she’s losing it, a sort of gaslighting that nearly crushes her attempts to warn everyone of the danger surrounding them.

In many ways this is Hendrix’s darkest book to date; his version of a vampire feeds on his victims in a way we haven’t seen before, prolonging their pain and pleasure as they are repeatedly fed upon and abused in violently bizarre ways. Yet in a novel that features young victims and vampire rape, The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires is often a breezy read, filled with Hendrix’s witty dialogue and a knack for crafting suspenseful passages that will keep you flipping the pages even as the story moves into increasingly brutal territory.

The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires manages to put a new spin on vampire lore while tackling the insidious repression women often have to deal with when trying to get their voices heard. Hendrix offers up a strong heroine in an unlikely setting, and hammers home an important lesson; mess with suburban moms at your own peril.

The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires is available now via Quirk Books.