Lady In Black – Okayish

Lady In Black.
Black Knight Chronicles, #8.
By John G. Hartness.
My rating ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ (barely) out of 5 stars.

Vigilante . . . check.
Killer vamp . . . check.
Undead serial murderer . . . check.
Enough alcohol to get Jimmy through this sh*tstorm? Doubtful.

Fists, fangs, and fury. It’s all a matter of balance when Jimmy Black, Charlotte’s Vampire Master of the City, is tasked with discovering why a mostly bloodless, decapitated body shows up in a dumpster. After a little sniffing around, Jimmy uncovers problems he didn’t even know he had. Like a murderous vampire running loose in the city.

To keep the whole supernatural world a secret, Jimmy has to find the vigilante and stop them before the mundane world figures out that the monsters-under-the-bed are really living right next door. But the people the vigilante is killing are people who probably deserve it. So now Jimmy has to balance the safety of the city against the secrecy of the supernatural world. To maintain his leadership of that supernatural world, Jimmy is going to have to step up his game before it’s “game over.”

This is the eighth book in the Black Knight Chronicles. It is one of these series that are a wee bit uneven. This installment is not one of the best books in the series. I gave it a three star rating but, to be honest, that was just barely.

Still, I cannot say it was a waste of my time to read it. It did entertain me…mostly.

The story is rather simple. A vigilante vampire is loose, go find him and deal with him. Dealing in this context of course means kill him. I like simple stories that starts and ends in the same book.

Of course there are the usual investigations, ass-kickings, a few twists and a lot of snarky smack talk. I do like Jimmy and the people around him and I especially like that his quite competent girlfriend is back in the business.

What I didn’t like is that the book doubles down on the road where most in the supernatural community doesn’t see Jimmy as competent enough to be Vampire Master of the City and either challenges him or just ignores him. Unfortunately Jimmy doesn’t seem to get his head out of his ass and do something about it. It’s really getting tiresome.

There were also some totally unnecessary catering for the woke mob at the beginning of the book. Unfortunately this author tends to go down that road every so often and, of course, it usually drags down the book.

Perhaps my main gripe with the story though was the twist when the identity of the vigilante was finally discovered. Picking a character that is generally liked by the readers/audience and close to the main protagonist is what useless and lazy Hollywood hacks do when writing their unintelligent soaps to cater for their equally unintelligent viewers. It almost ruined the book for me.

I did enjoy a lot of the book though so it gets a pass from me but, as I wrote, that’s just barely.