Red, White, and Blood

March 12, 2012
Farnsworth’s high-octane third supernatural thriller (after The President’s Vampire) starring Nathanial Cade, a vampire who’s served America’s presidents for centuries, pits him against a nigh-unstoppable adversary: the Boogeyman, a “spiritual parasite” whose physical forms Cade has confronted and destroyed in the past. This time the Boogeyman has teamed up with another of Cade’s enemies to target members of President Samuel Curtis’s staff and re-election campaign volunteers. Cade and his human assistant, Zach Barrows, aid the Secret Service as Curtis campaigns in the Midwest, facing additional dangers like internal conflicts and rabid anti-Curtis journalist Megan Roark. Curtis may lose the White House even if Cade can save his life. Farnsworth keeps the twists and explosive violence coming, keeping readers in suspense until the very last page. Agent: Alexandra Machinist, Linda Chester Literary Agency.

April 1, 2012
Farnsworth's universe of vampires and otherworldly creatures comes alive for the third time in this latest installment of the Nathaniel Cade series. Blood gushes against a political backdrop in this aptly named testament to gore. Cade, a vampire who was caught and bound to the service of the president by a voodoo practitioner in another century, has sworn to protect the nation and its leader. Accompanied by Zach Barrows, who in another life worked on President Samuel Curtis' election campaign, Cade has spent the previous three years working to keep the underworld at bay. Although Americans don't realize it, in Cade's world the things that go bump in the night are as real as trees and grass, but the government has spent decades covering up, collecting and destroying proof they exist. Every once in a while, though, something breaks through to this side and Cade is called in to put it down. A creature that moves with lightening speed and astonishing strength, Cade has the power to mend his own wounds and is an unparalleled fighter. However, he has almost met his match in the Boogeyman, a legendary figure that draws its power and thirst for blood from the proliferation of killers and sadists that populate the planet. While the president is on the campaign trail, evidence surfaces that the Bogeyman is back in action and preparing to take out the nation's leader, and Cade and Zach are dispatched to stop him and his cohorts. Chock full of violence and disembowelment, the book follows Cade as he tracks the killer through Middle America. Farnsworth manages to slow down the pace by inserting ham-fisted political rhetoric into the story; he would have been better off sticking to the action. Instead, he chose to turn Curtis into a certain not-very-thinly-described incumbent and muddy what is essentially an action story with politics. More complicated and somewhat sillier than the previous Cade novels; fans of nonstop action can skim over the politicizing passages to get to the blood and guts, while ignoring the author's tendency to preach politics.

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April 15, 2012
The third book in the President's Vampire series takes place during the final months of the 2012 reelection campaign. The threats aren't just political after Cade identifies a series of killings as a pattern indicative of the return of an ancient evil, a force that he's battled several times before but never managed to subdue. With the killer targeting campaign workers, and the likelihood of the president being reelected diminishing, Zach and Cade hit the campaign trail with the president's daughter. Yes, that would be the same girl Zach was caught with in the Lincoln Bedroom. Cade's secret is also becoming more widely known after security dictates that his true identity be revealed to the Secret Service's inner circle, leaving everyone wondering just how long the existence of the supernatural world can be kept secret from the general public. Recommend this one to vampire-thriller fans and to readers who enjoy political suspense fiction by, say, Joseph Finder but are willing to accept a little of the supernatural along the way.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)