Audio Book Review: Bloodlist by P.N Elrod

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It's 1936 and Jack Flemming has just arrived in Chicago, looking for work as a reporter. A few days later he wakes up on a beach, bruised and bloodied, only to discover that he is now a vampire. Jack has no memory of the past few days and no idea of how ended up stranded at the beach with a hole in his back. As Jack struggles to adjust to his new life as a vampire he determines to find out who had killed him, and why. Together with an overly inquisitive PI, Charles Escott, Jack sets off to hunt down his murderer, bringing him to the attention of the most powerful mobsters in town.

With Chicago's most dangerous criminals gunning for him and Escott, Jack begins piecing together the events that led to his death. Now if only he could get his memory back before he gets himself killed all over again.

Bloodlist was an entertaining paranormal detective novel which I enjoyed for its unique style and the Depression-era atmosphere. The characters were likable and easy to sympathize with, and I rooted for Jack as he blindly navigated through the new, and unfamiliar, challenges facing him as a vampire. Both exhilarated and ashamed by his new powers and the foreign demands of his body, Jack attempts to come to an understanding of what he now is.

Unlike many of the other vampire books which I've read, the romance was only a small element of the story and didn't take over the whole plot, and I found this refreshing. I was surprised to discover, after finishing the book, that P.N Elrod is actually a woman because I haven't read any other paranormal books by a woman, written in this manner. It's also one of the few paranormal books that I've read which is told from a male perspective, as well as from the perspective of a vampire, which was a nice change.

As an audio book, Bloodlist was exactly what I was looking for. It helped the time pass quickly while I worked on a rather boring project at work, though it didn't require too much thought or concentration, so I was able to focus on other things at the same time. The narrator, Barret Whitener, does a pretty good job and my only complains is that the female characters came out sounding a lot like the male ones and I had a hard time distinguishing them.

It's hard for me to tell if I would have enjoyed Bloodlist as much if I had read it, rather than listened to it, because it's a lot different from the books that I usually read. The fantasy elements are minimal and I'm not much of one for detective stories. It reminded me a lot of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files as well as The Sword Edged Blonde by Alex Bledsoe and I think that readers that enjoyed those books would probably like this one as well.