Here’s a Vampire Book that I really, really dig! Long out of print, it has happily recently been re-released by Leisure Books! If Holden Caufield had been bitten by a vampire after getting kicked out of College in THE CATCHER IN THE RYE, that might be as close as you could get to Ray Garton’s tale!
Live Girls is a story about Davey, a down on his luck proofreader for a pulp-style gun magazine. Davey’s life has just gotten from bad to worse-He’s been passed up for promotion, his girlfriend has left him, and he has to start looking for another job!
He wanders into a seedy Peep Show club called Live Girls, where he meets a beautiful stripper named Anya, who enthralls and captivates Davey with her hypnotic charms. After paying for his way to her booth, she proceeds to rock his world both physically and mentally. Davey is mesmerized by her, and finds he cannot keep his mind off her. He finds himself compelled to go back again and again for her incredible sexual favors. What Davey doesn’t know is that Anya is a vampire, and every time she has performed fellatio on him, she has also been drawing blood out of him-to satiate her hunger AND to slowly turn Davey into one of her kind!
Day after day she takes a little bit more of Davey’s humanity, until there is almost nothing left. But she has not reckoned with Davey’s friends: his co-worker Casey, and a reporter for the Post, who has been trying to track down the group responsible for the outlandish murders that have been occurring.
Together they are able to prevent Davey from going over to the dark side completely, and with their backing, he finds the strength to fight back against the creatures who have possessed him, and with his knowledge of weaponry from his Gun-Magazine job, he attempts to take down the club and all its inhabitants with it!
I love this story because its underlying message is about having people in your life that you can trust. Above all, this is the story of a weak willed person who becomes a strong-minded individual when he is faced with an almost insurmountable challenge. Together with friends who believe in him and stick by him, he is able to overcome the tragedy that has befallen him, and move on.
