Detective Tom Ryder is your classic cynical detective – he is good at is job because it is the only thing he has going for him. He has no wife, no family, and an expanding waist line. When there is double homicide at Mantek Labs, he is called in to investigate the crime. What starts out as an ordinary murder investigation becomes anything but as Tom Ryder discovers what the military and the World Health Organisation have been hiding for centuries.
Before the end of the day, Detective Ryder finds himself in a very different world than the one he awoke to that morning: a world full of silver bullets and monsters he had only seen in the movies. He finds himself on the lookout for his best friend, Myers, who ‘used to be dead but now he’s naked and running round the streets near the hospital, eating homeless guys.’ Will this day get any worse, or will he wake up from this nightmare and re-enter the predictable world he lived in before?
Although Rebirth begins as an average, run-of-the-mill detective story, it ends up as anything but that. Filled with interesting characters, exciting gunfights, and even a few epic battles thrown in, it is also different from the average vampire story because it humanises these characters and tells you its story from both perspectives (the humans fighting against the vampires as well as the vampires fighting against the humans). We are used to vampire stories giving us either one side or the other – (the tortured brooding vampires disgusted at what they have to do to survive, as in Anne Rice novels, or the soulless creatures that do not care what they do and who they destroy doing it..). This book offers none of these old clichés and the reader empathises with the individuals on both sides of the fight.
Scott Mckenzie’s Rebirth is a real page-turner that leaves you hungry for more from this new writer. If you aren’t absolutely thrilled by the exciting chase sequences and the bloody confrontations, the charm and wit of the characters will win you over. Spinetinglers highly recommends this book for anyone who loves classic vampire tales with a modern twist – five stars.
