Pale Death: a Lee Nez Novel by David and Aimee Thurlo

Lee Nez is a 90-something Navajo who still looks like he's in his mid-20's. He isn't a superman or on some special diet. He's a half vampire, and now he works for the Tribal Police under the name of Leo Hawk. Very few people know his secret, and one of them is Diane Lopez, an FBI agent working out of the office in Shiprock.

The site of a slaughter of three people, one of them an old friend of Diane named Lynette Alderete. All three bodies were run down and then staked. But why would anyone do that? Backtracking on where the three fled from, however, leads to a lab that masquerades as a air-testing facility. The door is boobytrapped to electrocute the first person that jerks it open, and inside... well, inside is very strange. Multiple lights that have the same spectrum as the sun, and can be adjusted to emit different sorts of light, and a cell used to imprison a single prisoner. Could it be that the government had captured a vampire and was doing tests on him, her or it?

It not only could be, but it is. The government somehow found out that vampires exist, or unique individuals with incredible healing abilities and a strange weakness for sunlight (apparently no one in the government wants to use the "V" word and risk ridicule), and they set out to trap one and study it in the hopes of using its healing abilities for science.

Only their subject didn't volunteer to be part of any tests, and the treatment was little better than endless torture committed over and over and over again. Now that the Vampire, Stewart Tanner, has escaped, he's got a grudge the size of China and is going to revenge himself on everyone he see as being part of the government that did those things to him in the first place. Having revenged himself on the employees who were doing the testing on him, now he's going after anyone who works for the government: cops, judges, even the Navajo Tribal Police. As Tanner leaves a trail of death and carnage behind, Lee and Diane must track him down before anyone else can die, for those who have learned the secrets of Vampires could find out Lee's secret, and make him Subject Gamma.

Tanner was tagged as "Subject Beta", which implies there was someone else before him that the government subjected to such treatment. But even as Lee and Diane struggle to take out Tanner, they must find out who was behind the Lab, and neutralize that threat as well. For until the man the Nabajos are calling "Pale Death" is caught, no one can rest easy.

Lee Nez is an interesting Character, partly turned into a vampire, but rescued from needing (but not craving) blood by a Navajo shaman who sung his spirit as far back into balance as he could, Lee can tolerate the sunlight provided he covers his skin with clothes and sunblock, and instead of drinking blood, he eats like a teenager with two hollow legs. But he still has to be careful: any rip in his clothing, or his sunblock wearing off, and he could still go up like a match.

I don't have much experience with Navajos as characters, except in the Tony Hillerman detective novels starring Leaphorn and Chee, but Lee Nez seems to be a less stoic sort of character than the Navajo we meet in those novels. No, he doesn't yell when he gets hurt, but he does have a sense of humor, and seems more "white" in spirit than Navajo. I'm sorry that I can't put in in any better words than that. It's more an indefinable feeling than something I can point to concretely in the story. Perhaps it's that he seems less Navajo because I expect a Navajo character to be thinking of things like sings and cultural festivals. Lee, because of his half-vampire status, is the ultimate outsider, even to his own people.

This book seemed less to me about detective work than about trailing a very bloody spree killer at his work. Yes, detective work does get done, but more of the book seemed to be taken up with firefights, sneak attacks, killings and their aftermath rather than legwork, although a fair bit of that goes on, too. The fights are generally more exciting than the detective stuff, which may have also played a part in my perception.

In the end, I did enjoy this book, but I can't say I was surprised at who the real villain behind the whole thing was. But the book did leave me without a sense of closure, as the real villain, though he may be in the hospital, is not going to be prosecuted. At best, he'll lose his funding. The vampire, Stewart Tanner, is almost certainly dead, but Lee and Diane are checking the site anyway just in case he might have made it out. It's sort of a non-ending ending and doesn't feel very satisfying to the reader, who wants to see some justice done. Tanner, for all his bloody murders and terrifying attacks, does gain a lot of sympathy, despite being a vampire needing blood and apparently not too particular about where it comes from. After all, he would have continued being the owner of a popular late-night restaurant owner and cook if he had never been kidnapped in the first place. So, despite it all, the ending was lacking any kind of real closure.

I enjoyed everything but the ending, so I do plan on picking up any sequels that may be published, but the ending is something of a turn-off, so I'll have to be careful to recommend the series over this particular book.