Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #823688 in Books
• Published on: 1997-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Customer Reviews

If you like supernatural detectives, you'll love this series
This is the FIFTH book in Tanya Huff's 'Victory Nelson, Investigator: Otherwordly Crimes a Speciality' series. The first four (in order) are: Blood Price, Blood Trail, Blood Lines and Blood Pact. I would strongly recommend reading them in order.

Ms Huff knows how to write unpretentious prose with a good sense of style, pace and humour. She makes the very occasional 'in' joke - but if you don't get them, you must be VERY new to the field.

Our heroine, Vicki Nelson, is the usual fictional private investigator - in that she is tenacious, aggressive and something of a maverick. A decorated police officer invalided out of the force due to deteriorating eye sight (the devastating condition retinitis pigmentosa), which has already rendered her night-blind, the book opens with her witnessing a gruesome murder. This turns out to be the first in a series which has the local (Toronto) press screaming that there is a vampire on the loose.

Like the best stories, Vicki isn't the only interesting recurring character. There is her ex-partner (in both senses), Mike, still a serving police officer. And then there is Henry Fitzroy, illegitimate son of Henry VIII (a nicely researched touch) and, of course, vampire.

All three of them are trying to solve the murders and we are swept along by brisk plotting and interesting characterisation.

I dislike the 'if you like this, then you'll like that' sort of recommendation, but we all use it because it is SO useful! If you like Laurell K Hamilton's stuff - or even if you find her books overly, shall we say, sexually obsessive? then you'll love these. If you are a relative newcomer to the genre, but like detective stories, you'll like these too.

Over the five books in the series I have read so far, she has developed the characters well, and without giving anything away, I would REALLY recommend not reading this one without reading the first 4, as this fifth one contains an, er, 'considerable character development'! It was the first one of the series I read and oh, do I wish I'd read them in order! Another recommendation - don't read the backs of the books if you can help it....I DO wish they wouldn't give away so much of the plots!

Good mystery with thoroughly enjoyable characters.
Blood Debt is the latest in Tanya Huff's series of books featuring Henry Fitzroy, a Tudor-age vampire who writes Elizabethan Romances for a living, Victory Nelson, a former Toronto Policewoman turned Private Eye, and Mike Cellucci, a Toronto Police Detective. As in the earlier books in the series, the mystery around which the plot revolves is engaging, and the dialog is witty and full of genre-related in-jokes. I would have given the book a 9 or 10, except for the fact that the first two books in the series are clearly superior. Hence, for relativity's sake, Blood Debt gets an 8.

The final resolution in a vampiric love triangle
Human Detective Sergeant Mike Celluci of the Toronto Police Department is elated that Henry Fitzroy is out of his vampiric lover's life. Henry was forced to turn Vicki into a creature of the night in order to save her life. In doing this he gave up all claim to her because (as everyone knows) it is a basic law of vampiric physiology that two vampires can never live in the same territory. However, all that changes when Henry awakens to see a spirit haunt him. Unless he discovers who killed the spirit and avenge the creature's death, everyone around Henry could face mortal danger. ....Henry knows that he lacks the skills needed to track down a killer. He turns to Vicki, who still operates as a private detective, for help. Vicki agrees to take on the case. As the trio work together to hunt down a murderer, an unusual occurrence happens. The more time that Vicki and Henry spend together, the less incidents of territorial ownership occurs (the lesser known corollary to Vampiric Physiology I). This enables them to forge a new relationship that excludes Celluci without undermining his relationship with the vampire that he loves. ....In this final installment of Tanya Huff's vampire series, the author brilliantly sews up all the loose ends from the previous four novels. The greatness of Ms. Huff shines through as she facilitates the feeling that all three lead characters will live happily ever after. BLOOD DEBT is part romance, part mystery, and totally entertaining as it expands the boundaries and raises the standard of the supernatural romance. The entire series is a must read for fans of otherworldly romance. ....Harriet Klausner -