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Vampyrrhic  By Simon Clark             Nailed by the Heart            (Simon Clark's Website) Vampyrrhic is 441 pages long and is set in the North Yorkshire town of Leppington, which is not far from Whitby.  There are four central characters in the story, but the main one is probably Dr David Leppington and the reader meets him for the first time, in chapter one, as he travels by train back to the town of his birth, which, as you might have gathered, takes its name from his family (in the story anyway). David has few memories of Leppington, he was just six years old when his mother and father left the town and moved to Liverpool. Now he has been offered a chance to take over from the town's doctor, who is retiring. David is in two minds about this and has decided to pay a visit to the town that he left over twenty years ago, while he makes up his mind about the offer. It will also give him a chance to visit his uncle George. Unbeknown to David though, there are dark forces at work in Leppington and creatures of a singularly unnatural diet move beneath the town's streets. But not rats. For some strange reason there are never any rats in Leppington's sewers.  The other three central characters in Vampyrrhic are Electra Chanwood, Bernice Mochardi and Jack Black. Electra is the proprietor of the Station Hotel. She is quite a striking woman who once had a promising media career ahead of her, but she came back to town after her father's death and never managed to pick up either her career or her old life again. Bernice, like David, is a guest at the hotel and she works at the local leech farm -- now, there's a nice profession for a young lady. Last, but not least, is Jack Black and he has to be one of the most unlikely heroes that you could imagine. He is a hero though, as well as being a man of rather. unusual gifts. Of all the characters in Vampyrrhic, I must admit that Black is my favourite. I enjoyed reading this book. The characters are very likeable and there are always plenty of things happening. A lot of those things might not be very nice, but Vampyrrhic is a horror novel after all. For me, I think one of the most gruesome parts of the story was when the good doctor and his friends utilized various sizes of knives and saw from the kitchen to cut off a vampires head with. I personally did not find the scene offensive, but if you are a reader who is used to reading horror that is more to do with atmosphere than gore, you might be a little shocked by it. Because sometimes the things that go bump in the night, in this story, are falling heads, and the heads tend to fall pretty fast once the gang rent a couple of chainsaws. Please don't think that Vampyrrhic is all about blood and gore and mindless violence though. I am just warning you of what to expect in some parts of the book. Vampyrrhic has a good storyline, it is very well written and there is a lot more to it than just the transition of vampires from being the walking undead to being just the dead. I am not a fan of mindless violence, and find gore for the sake of gore an incredible bore. I never once felt bored reading this book it is an incredibly good read and I  fully intend to read more if Simon Clark's work. HOME