Vampire Mystery gets Hospitalized in Nightshifted
By
Nightshifted by Cassie Alexander
This is a very different kind of vampire mystery, and not just for the setting. Edie Spence thought she was prepared for anything they could throw at her after graduating from nursing school. She had dealt with everything from burn victims to severed limbs with equal ease. But when she is assigned to Y4 she is faced with something for which all of her nursing school training never prepared her. For this is a secret ward hidden in the deepest parts of the hospital, and it is hidden for a good reason. This is the ward where all things out of the ordinary, the paranormal are taken.
On her first shift she learns to deal with vampires, were-beings, zombies and much more. She tries to take it in stride, but then she is faced with the worst possible situation. During her watch a vampire servant is lost – turns to dust right there in the ward. But before he dies he whispers two simple words to Edie, “Save Anna” and with that she is drawn into the world of the undead. For now she must find the elusive Anna, before it is too late and she becomes one of the walking dead.
For a first effort I found this vampire mystery surprisingly good. It has a really modern feel to it for a vampire story and the quirky viewpoint of it being a kind of medical vampire mystery just adds to its appeal. Edie is like many nurses I have met, down to earth and hard to shake. This is not someone who is uneasy at the sight of blood, for whatever reason it is around. This makes her the perfect foil for a vampire story, where everything around her is unreal, except her handle on the situation.
The vampire story starts as a medical drama with an urban paranormal twist but quickly escalates into a kind of vampire cold war, with all the nasty intrigue that entails. But more than anything it is how Cassie Alexander chooses to portray the world she has made that makes this vampire story sit up and be noticed.
For anyone who has ever worked the night shift in a county hospital the ebb and flow of manic activity after mind-numbing quiet will be familiar. She has captured the nuances in Nightshifted and made them work to create an atmosphere that just enhances your sense of the unreal of her surroundings. This is not your everyday vampire mystery, and I am going to be intrigued to see where she takes this idea from here.
