Vampire Sunrise: Delilah Street: Paranormal Investigator [Mass Market Paperback]

OK, this is book three in the series, and it has yet to gel into something coherent. I thought the first book was promising, that Delilah was a congenial character to spend time with and her voice was appealing. Sure the plot was meandering and didn't make a lot of sense, but the potential was there. The second book was frankly just more of the same. Delilah went places and the plot meandered about until a totally unconvincing conclusion. Delilah was still fun, but the trappings were not improving with authorial practice.

Finally we have this book, and not only does the plot meander more aimlessly than ever, but Delilah herself is starting to become irritating. Delilah roams around Vegas sort of at random, and does stupid things like going back to the hotel where she was held prisioner more or less of her own free will and getting into trouble again. There are tons of non-sequiters such as Delilah being emotionally and physicaly exhausted and only thinking about getting to sleep but then throwing it all over to spar meaninglessly with Nightwine. The author apparently feels that Delilah works better alone, so despite being passionately in love, the plot keeps her from working with her boyfriend so often that he's something of an afterthought in the book. Even worse is how his mother is litterally flown-in and out in a few pages. Even when Ric & Delilah *do* work together, the result is a spectacularly ill-thought-out two-man-one-dog assult on the villians of the last book. Given that victory then depending on having boatloads of allies, this is just *stupid*! Also rather stupid (and unexplained) is the whole bit about Ric's eye, and how Delilah puts a contact lens into it which he totatlly fails to notice over the course of several days..

Frankly I had to force myself to slog thorough to the end of this one. If I do read the next one, it will be through some lingering and unhealthy need to see how things came out, not through any anticipation of a good read.

This story is mediocre. Not as good as the first two. The first three chapters are a recap of the first two books, which is okay, but went on far too long. The conclusion of the story was abrute.

Delilah Street is a paranormal investigator in Sin City: Las Vegas. Her life is complicated by many circumstances, most particularly that she's ticked off several of the mob bosses in town and the last one's agenda seems mixed at best. Her silver medium abilities include the ability to see ghosts in mirrors and travel via mirror, and her ex-FBI lover, Ric, is able to raise zombies. And then there's the mysterious 'twin' who may be a real sister or some kind of doppleganger...

This story starts with boyfriend Ric still hospitalized from being vein-drained (and possibly killed!) by vampires in the last novel. Delilah spends much of her time in this book thinking about Ric or feeling guilty that she had to give Cocaine/Snow a kiss (the Brimstone Kiss) in order to get his help saving Ric, particularly at the beginning when the mystery is unfolding.

As soon as Ric seems to be on the mend, Delilah's pulled into dealing with both the underground Egyptian vampires who tried to kill Ric as well as some ungodly monster killing the werewolves. Failure equals dead Delilah, so she's instantly juggling far too many issues and is scrambling to keep everybody happy while she tries to figure out what's going on. That's some nice tension, and it only gets worse for Delilah the more things go on. But her new found silver medium abilities come in handy and she manages to extricate herself from danger and get the werewolf Mafia don off her back.

Overall, this is a good read and I enjoyed it very much. I think it suffers a bit from the middle novel syndrome, though, as there's a lot of stuff that is wrappign up loose ends and relationship thoughts that frequently had my eyes glazing over. These do serve to develop the relationship with the out-of-it Ric while he's recovering--sort of keeping him on screen; so I understand why the author chose to put them in the book. I didn't hate them, but they were too much for me. Just a bit too much, though.

What I felt the need for, and frankly think the novel is less for lacking, is a true reappearance of Snow. We see very little of him, and I would have liked more of a role for him in this story's development. In this book, Snow is more like the knitter's yarn that she isn't using at the moment: attached and jumping across the stiches behind the scenes, but essentially doing nothing except being there until needed in some future book.

If you haven't read this series and you like urban fantasy, you will probably like this one. Delilah Street and teh world she lives in are really cool. I am looking forward to the next book in the series and to learning who and what Delilah is.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 12 reviews  3.6 out of 5 stars