Bloodthirsty

This could very well be my most favorite book about vampires ever for one main reason – it’s not about vampires! Well, it sort of is about vampires. It’s about the female infatuation with them and how pop culture has made them so desirable. Really this story is about an awkward sixteen year old boy who is the new kid in the school after moving from the Midwest to New York City. This boy, Finbar Frame, decides to reinvent himself to become cooler like his twin brother Luke. However, Finn lacks everything that makes a guy traditionally popular. He’s not good at sports, he reads a lot, is ghostly pale, is allergic to the sun, and just generally awkward. Making due with what he has, he transforms himself into a vampire to impress show more the new kids (mostly the girls) at his new school.

This book is a dream. It is very well written, and is super easy to connect to if you’re a person who has ever felt like you were on the outside looking in. The whole family dynamic of the Frames is nice, and easy to believe. The interactions between the character is natural and doesn’t have the typical tropes that you find in most ya books. The dad is a grown up dork, the mom is a bit obsessive, and Luke is a stereotypical jock with heart. For the most part, these characters are fleshed out enough to know who they are, but not so much to where you feel like you’re getting an entire family back story on them. All of the secondary characters in this novel are great. You can relate to the main girls with one being a book reading, con-loving nerd, and the other is bookish, smart, and hiding a past. Both of them are really down to earth and, as a female, I could see myself in both of them.

If you like making fun of vampires and that whole obsession that has overtaken our culture, this is a great book for you. Finn doesn’t understand it either, but that doesn’t stop him from reading everything about them. He manages to take his love of reading, ability to remember facts, and general appearance to become one of the elite vamps that all the girls are after. Now if you’re wondering if he got a girl, he manages to get two girls, and become semi-popular. Granted, he does learn some pretty tough lessons along the way. He has to face the girl who lied to him, the one who he lead on, bullies, and the sun.

Final Thoughts:
I loved this book. It is one of those books that I will recommend everyone to read because it just is so good in the relatability, humor, and witty departments. This book took me back to high school with all the awkwardness of fitting in, but with none of the pain of not being able to. It normalizes those of us who read just a little too much to be considered normal and gives up to the dorks who want to be popular. Really guys, this is one you should go out and pick up to read. It is delightful in all the ways you would want a book that makes fun of vampires to be. show less

First Line: Roger and Aggie held hands as they watched the kid bleed out.

Detectives Mike Lomax and Terry Biggs are still basking in the glow of solving the murders which occurred in The Rabbit Factory. In fact they've been approached by someone who wants to turn the investigation into a movie. Since Terry has three daughters who want to go to college, they agree to meet with a big-time producer at a red carpet event. Mogul Barry Gerber is a no-show that night, but he does show up in a garbage can the next day. So instead of talking Barry into financing a movie, Lomax and Biggs get to find his killer.

Two days later the prime suspect in Gerber's death is also found dead-- by exactly the same means. Since both of the deceased were widely show more despised within the Hollywood community the suspect list is huge. Lomax and Biggs need to find the motive in order to find the killer.

I fell in love with Marshall Karp's writing and with his sense of humor from the moment I began reading The Rabbit Factory, and my love affair has only deepened with Bloodthirsty. I've always been a fan of humorous mysteries and had been wild about Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum books. But after reading the same plot with the same characters that never grew or changed, I stopped reading Evanovich quite a while ago. Thank heavens I discovered Marshall Karp's Lomax and Biggs! My warped sense of humor is finally off its starvation diet.

Karp has plenty from which to draw his humor: the police, the fire department, the morgue, the hospital, and-- last but not least-- Hollywood. Since I come from a long line of farmers and sailors, and I worked with the public for well over a quarter of a century, I have to say that Karp had my funny bone lit up like a pinball machine throughout the book.

What's marvelous is that Bloodthirsty isn't just funny. The characters are well drawn. Mike Lomax still grieves over the death of his wife, but he stopped wallowing and is making changes. Terry Biggs' life in a house filled with females is a riot (and I feel a bit of pity for him, too). Even minor characters have a depth to them that you normally only see with characters "above the title."

The pacing of the plot was swift and sure. As I read, I'd occasionally come up for air and be amazed at how much I'd read in a short period of time. Karp can really suck you into his story. And just when I thought I knew where the plot was headed, it did a 180, gave me a surprise or two, and left me in delight.

If your sense of humor needs a good meal, set it down to a selection of books written by Marshall Karp. You'll know how grateful it is by how hard you laugh. show less

I listened to this, the second in the Lomax & Biggs series. It's a tragic story, but is not a normal mystery since we find out early on who is carrying out the killing and why. The book is better than the first, The Rabbit Factory, in that it is no longer than it needs to be; it is funnier and has more believable characters. The narrator, Tom Stechschulte, is terrific, making it much more fun to listen to than to read.

Ah Hollywood, L.A.'s glitzier, fluffier cousin. The birthplace of Noir lies down street a little ways, but Tinsel Town has more than its fair share of darkness and depravity. It's the land of glamour and flashbulbs and shattered dreams. Beneath the gilded exterior she's as rotten and festering as a third world whore. So is it any wonder that it was the setting for one of the most entertaining mysteries I've read this year? The book is Blood Thirsty by Marshall Karp. It's number two in a series of four (so far at least), and I got to tell you: I'm already craving the next installment like a junkie after his next fix.

The main characters of the series are Mike Lomax and Terry Biggs, a couple of detectives in the Hollywood Division of the show more Los Angeles police department. Mike is the straight man. The story is told from his perspective... mostly. He's hard and gruff and jaded. Terry is just as hard and jaded as Mike, but he also packs an arsenal of jokes that would make Dave Chappelle jealous. Together they make for one of the most entertaining detective partnerships I've seen in a long time.

This installment of The Lomax and Biggs Detective Duo Extravaganza picks up where the last boo, The Rabbit Factory), left off. Still basking in the glow of their success with the Family Land murders, our intrepid detectives are approached by a bigshot producer/director wanting to purchase for the rights to make the Family Land story into a movie. Money changes hands, and the detectives are invited to a Hollywood premier to meet a producer named Barry Gerber who might be bankrolling their movie. They go, along with their significant others and Mike's loud-mouthed father, Big Jim Lomax, and everyone has a smashing good time. Everyone except for their bigshot producer. He never makes it to the premier and is found exsanguinated and stuffed in a trash can in Beverly Hills. And wouldn't you know it? Lomax and Biggs just happen to catch the case. But before they can get a good handle on who they're dealing with, another Hollywood bigshot turns up exsanguinated and stuffed into a port-o-potty--this time an actor named Damien Hedge.

There are too many pieces to the puzzle to enumerate them all here, but take my word for it when I say Karp does an admirable job of stringing the reader along. Midway through the book the detectives learn that their quarry is a husband and wife from Podunk, Texas. Their only daughter wound up on the wrong side of a knife and bled to death in a gutter, all because the A-list stars needed their blow. It turns out that Mama and Daddy didn't take kindly to that, so they decided that SoCal was in need of a little Texas-style justice. After this revelation, our detectives rush off to save the next scum-sucker on the Lone Star hit list, and things go predictably askew.

Don't worry, I'm not going to spoil the ending. The only reason I mentioned the murderers' names and back story was because Karp punctuates his narrative with chapters from the parents' point of view, so it can't really be a spoiler, now can it? I don't usually like that kind of structure in a novel, though. It seems like a cop-out to some extent, and it takes away much of the fun of a whodunnit story if you tell me right of the bat who the murderer is. That being said, in this instance it didn't at all ruin my enjoyment of the book. If anything, that is the biggest testament to Karp's skill as a storyteller. He's also a damn funny guy. The one-liners and jokes that flew between Lomax and Biggs made me laugh out loud a couple of times, which is no mean feat in itself, I'll tell you. But the thing that I liked most about the novel, the thing that got me all tingly inside during the reading of it, was the language. Yeah, the dialogue is smoking too, but Karp's prose is as sharp and biting as a razor's edge. Karp has a flare for hardboiled imagery that makes me go squishy inside. I eat it up. It's the kind of thing I long for in a book--not only a good story, but creative language and inventive style. What can I say? I'm a literature geek at heart. It's my bag.

I'd be hard pressed to come up with a negative side to the book. But if someone put a gun to my head and made me, I'd have to say that Karp tries a little too hard to make the murderers sympathetic. And they are sympathetic, no doubt. If someone killed my little boy and got away Scot free I'd contemplate similar measures. I just didn't feel that sorry for the girl. She made a choice to get involved with all that Hollywood crap, and she paid the price. Yeah, it wasn't fair, but little in this world is. Call me a hard-hearted existentialist.

But after reading Bloodthirsty, I do have one nagging question. How exactly should we classify it? You could say it's Neo-Noir. It's certainly fits the theme, what with all the human darkness and the lack of sentimentality. It's not James Elroy dark, nor does it need to be in order to be Neo-Noir, but there's a note of redemption in the plot that does not belong in Noir. So that's not it. And it isn't a police procedural, either. You can tell Karp has done his homework on law enforcement tactics, but there are some aspects to the tale that are more sensational that realistic. So that's out. One of the biggest things I liked about the book was the hardboiled language, but the story itself isn't totally hardboiled. There's no Dirty Harry-style vigilante justice (on the part of the detectives, at least), and the story ends too nicely for it to be completely hardboiled. I dunno. Maybe it's all three. Maybe it's none of the three. Or maybe I need to quit trying to put everything in a neat little box.

Whatever other labels may apply, Blood Thirsty is at its core a Mystery, and an excellent one at that. It was a thrilling ride I blasted through in just a couple of days, and I'm already salivating for the next installment. In the end, that's all that matters.

http://readabookonce.blogspot.com/2011/12/bloodthirsty-by-marshall-karp.html show less

This is a delightful second entry in the Lomax and Biggs series. The plots are credible and not quite cozy. The writing is snappy and funny. Very enjoyable.

After loving ‘The Rabbit Factory’ I wasn’t sure if this would live up to my expectations. But it did. It’s not quite a five star book, four and a half is more apt but that’s only because I didn’t feel myself devouring it in the same way as its predecessor.

Its undemanding good banter and likeable characters just invites you in straight away. Lomax and Biggs are on top form again although I could understand why people might not be swayed with their nature; it’s quite cheesy in places with often predictable one-liners.

For this outing, we are in the centre of Hollywood and all its dealings. Centre stage is the hated producers and directors all ready to exit stage left. It felt a long time between crimes though; however a lot show more does happen between the events. This is an easy novel to read and you don’t necessarily have to read ‘The Rabbit Factory’ first, it just helps to already know the characters and their nature. show less

2nd in the Lomax and Bigg series by Karp, these LA detectives are thrown into the investigation when the backer for their movie idea turns up dead one morning. From there they investigate several other murders all of whom are related to the studio business.
These characters are fun to read and follow. The banter is entertaining and Karp keeps the pacing on the plot quick enough to keep you involved and entertained. Can't wait for the next in the series.