Love Like Blood - Marcus Sedgwick

Holy vampires!

I would imagine that it's difficult for any writer to find any new spin on vampire lore, but Marcus Sedgwick has a fair go at it in Love Like Blood. He not only finds two new ways of looking at the subject that consider arcane aspects of the love of blood and the drinking of it from a scientific and a religious perspective, but he ties them together well and with some conviction. More importantly however, Sedgwick creates a thoroughly delicious horror-thriller that is never short on new twists and escalating developments.

The scientific context of the study of blood, its properties and various mysterious practices associated with it, comes from the character at the centre of the book. Charles Jackson is a doctor, a consultant in matters related to blood diseases, but specifically on the subject of haemophilia. And interest in blood, the love of blood and love as blood all come together in 1951 when Charles encounters a beautiful American student in Paris who is writing a thesis on the use of blood in Dante's Inferno. Charles however has seen her in the company of a strange foreign gentleman who be believes is the same person he saw drinking blood from a woman soon after the the liberation of Paris in 1944.

The religious aspect is a bit more of a stretch, since it relates to Christian Eucharistic practice of drinking the "blood of Christ", but Sedgwick has plenty of other references to strange Christian practices involving the saints and bloodletting that make the otherwise unusual combination of vampires with crosses an intriguing one. The thriller elements of the novel are fairly standard when Charles stumbles on their activities and has to go on the run from these dangerous figures - and it involves a fairly convenient and timely large inheritance - but combined with the unique spin on the vampire mythology, Love Like Blood is indeed never less than thrilling all the way to its deliciously twisted, if somewhat hurried conclusion.

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