“Recovering con artist Ciara Griffin is trying to live the straight life, even if it means finding a (shudder!) real job. She takes an internship at a local radio station, whose late-night time-warp format features 1940s blues, ’60s psychedelia, ’80s goth, and more, all with an uncannily authentic flair. Ciara soon discovers just how the DJs maintain their cred: they’re vampires, stuck forever in the eras in which they were turned.
Ciara’s first instinct, as always, is to cut and run. But communications giant Skywave wants to buy WVMP and turn it into just another hit-playing clone. Without the station — and the link it provides to their original Life Times — the vampires would “fade,” becoming little more than mindless ghosts of the past. Suddenly a routine corporate takeover is a matter of life and undeath.
To boost ratings and save the lives of her strange new friends, Ciara rebrands the station as “WVMP, the Lifeblood of Rock ‘n’ Roll.” In the ultimate con, she hides the DJs’ vampire nature in plain sight, disguising the bloody truth as a marketing gimmick. WVMP becomes the hottest thing around — next to Ciara’s complicated affair with grunge vamp Shane McAllister. But the “gimmick” enrages a posse of ancient and powerful vampires who aren’t so eager to be brought into the light. Soon the stakes are higher — and the perils graver — than any con game Ciara’s ever played….”
This novel could cost me a small fortune in iTunes downloads.
But that’s sorta what’s so great about it: The music and how each vampire that makes up the WVMP radio lineup relates to it, the impact it had on their Life Time and how they’ve brought it into their real time. {A vamp’s Life Time being the time during which they lived, but perhaps more importantly, when they died.} As so many other readers/reviewers have mentioned, it’s an original twist.
The DJs represent different eras and while Shane McAllister, Ciara’s leading man, er, vampire, is interesting with his grunge rock ways, it’s Monroe, the bluesman, who really fascinated me. And he was barely in it at all! But his backstory is – at the cost of repeating myself because there is simply no better word for it – fascinating. {Think Robert Johnson and his crossroads deal, but not.}
Wicked Game was a fast read with several nice plot twists. I’m glad it’s going to at the very least be followed up with a sequel, Bad to the Bone, which is set for a May ‘09 release.
You can read the first chapter of Wicked Game by visiting Jeri Smith-Ready’s website. You can even listen to a lot of the songs featured in the novel on her site.
Filed under: Just Finished | Tagged: Fantasy, Jeri Smith-Ready
