Californian James Falcon's Romanian mother told him so many folk stories by the time he reaches college in 1943, hes an expert on the strigoi, the vampires who infested the most isolated forest of Wallachia. Mostly as a joke, he writes a term paper on the strigoi. But the joke turns out serious when US counter-intelligence recruit him.
James hunts down strigoi Nazi assassins in warravaged Europe, although the principal one, the terrible Dorin Duca, continues to elude him. In the Cold War, he must fight once more, as Duca goes on a rampage across London, England.
With Jill, a police dog handler of great beauty and resilience, James is assigned to Britain's MI6 to go on the hunt again. But even after the threat is driven away, James will still uncover more secrets - secrets that come ever close to home ... .
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James Falcon has been raised by a Romanian mother telling him about all he old stories about vampires and the strigoi, a different but certainly not less horrible kind of the undead. He becomes the only comprehensive person with knowledge of the strigoi. Not really certain about the strigoi existing but with reasonable evidence that they might, he is asked by the counter-intelligence during WW2 to help out with his expertise because eveything described in a term paper by him seems to be happening all over resistance camps against the Germans.
Soon James developes a sense for the strigoi and their way of draining and killing people and he becomes the weapon against the strigoi, hunting them down and destroying them.
His nemesis Dorin Duca seems to be the centerpoint of all strigoi movement, always a step before James he doesn't seem to be catchable. When James arrives in Antwerp in 1944 he destroys the strigoi but Duca seems to have vanished. He returns home to begin a normal life that is disrupted almost 15 years later by the counter-intelligence approaching him again.
Terrible murders have happened in London/England and evidence points to the one and only Dorin Duca. After hearing that Duca was once detained and now could escape, James becomes even more eager to find and destroy him.
But how to kill something that is old enough to withstand all the holy utensils given to him for his hunt ? James has to come up with a plan to finally make an end to the strigoi and time is short because Duca has already booked a cruise to the United States.
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Descendant is the most interesting and exciting novel about the strigoi I have read in a long, long time. Armed with a load of new inspirations to this genre the author took me on a ride, willingly surrendering my night sleep.
There are so many new and clever twists around the strigoi existence and such fine explanations about the differences between strigoi vii and strigoi mortii that the reading fun doesn't stop. Details craft a tale unlike others and most shockingly it is almost believable, sticking to historical background. Well done.
Rating:
Visit Graham Masterton.
Paperback: 216 pages
Publisher: Severn House Publishers (June 1, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0727891715
ISBN-13: 978-0727891716
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