The President's Vampire

The President’s Vampire by Christopher Farnsworth

A Nathaniel Cade novel, #2

For 140 years, vampire Nathaniel Cade has been bound to protect and serve the United States of America.  Cade’s existence is the most closely guarded of White House secrets: a superhuman covert agent who is the last, best line of defense against an ever-threatening gallery of nightmarish foes that ordinary citizens couldn’t begin to imagine.

When an ancient evil – one ominously familiar to Cade – is resurrected, the President’s Vampire and his human handler, Zach Barrows, must track down its source.  The prime suspect is a shady private defense contractor who may be dealing with powers far deadlier than any mortal weapon.  It’s up to Cade and Zach to drag the forces of darkness into the light…

--The President’s Vampire

by Christopher Farnsworth

Copyright © 2011 by Christopher Farnsworth

Published by Putnam, a division of Penguin Group

My Review

An old enemy is about to unleash an even older threat upon the world and only Nathaniel Cade can stop it.  He had dealt with this particular threat nearly one hundred years ago and thought it gone from the earth, but some things never go away.

Cade’s enemy, going by the name Colonel Graves, has found a way to create a race of reptilian killers called “Snakeheads” using a virus.  One bite, and within minutes, the victim is transformed into a killing machine.  They know no thought except to kill and that means only one person, one thing, can stop them.  But the oath that drives him is the very thing that keeps him from taking out the heart of this particular kill factory.  When Zach is double-crossed and taken prisoner, can Cade find a way to rescue him and put an end to these killers before they’re let loose on a crowd of holiday shoppers?

While this story is as well-designed as its predecessor, the constant switching back and forth between our heroes and the poor people who have the misfortune to become Snakeheads got to be tiresome.  As soon as the story started to move, you have to shift gears into the mind of another unfortunate soul minutes before they’re infected, then they die, and then you can get back to the story.  It got to be a little tiresome after a while.  But for that, it was a good story, and I’m definitely going to go for the third in the series.

I give this story THREE STARS.