"What if you had to kill your best friend to save your worst enemy?" With this enigmatic teaser on the cover of the slick new trade paperback, writer and editor Beecher Smith presents his first novel, a work that's as charming as a fortuitous meeting between Universal, Hammer Films, and "Dark Shadows."

A hearty prologue shows the Sixteenth Century transformation of a Dracula clansman into an immortal, nocturnal predator; but it also hints at his eternal displeasure at the being he has become. Into present day Memphis, amidst an epidemic of killer flu, steps Ladis Stravos, a handsome Hungarian doctor who claims he can cure the disease, and whose well-funded Loki Labs has recently opened for business. Though a rare skin condition keeps him mostly out of the sunlight, Lad immediately makes friends and allies: especially down-and-out attorney Dalton Stallings, whose elderly mother lies at death's door until Lad begins his miracle cure, and Dalton's ex-lover Hillary, who sees Lad as an exciting challenge even better than her current boyfriend, Reynolds ("Ren") Field, the very same estate lawyer who ruined Dalton's career and stole Hillary in one bold stroke.

Into this charged atmosphere of hurt feelings and loss flits the lovely and virginal Melody Collins, Dalton's niece, and her lovelorn protector, Memphis police detective Adam Goldsmith, whose crazy theories about the bizarre epidemic threaten to get him kicked off the force. Before long Hillary has sunk her claws into Lad, brokering his purchase of an art deco mansion with a grisly history and using her new found interest in the foreigner to unceremoniously dump Ren, even as they partner to selfishly inflate commissions and fees. But Lad has his own reasons for befriending this family and its fringe elements, reasons which include Melody, and which could result in an end to his centuries-old "condition."

Meanwhile, in another quarter of Memphis, a slab is pushed off a hidden vault in a church sub-basement, and yet another immortal rises to do battle with The Enemy. His only weapons, an edict long since renounced by the Church, and a dagger in the shape of the Cross of St. Andrew. Bringing these elements tantalizingly closer, then apart, then closer again, Smith directs the danse macabre with touches of humor and surprising tenderness, allowing even the nastiest characters some sympathy (well, maybe except one) and dimension. The action simmers nicely as characters thrust, feint, and parry at each other while the atmosphere gathers menace around them.

Beecher Smith's debut novel is a promising start to what may well become a multipart Memphis saga played out on the unusual stage of this modern Gothic city, one peopled by characters whose destinies are hidden just beneath the surface, and whose motivations run like blood through their veins. It's a heady concoction, indeed!