Vampire Shift is a fascinating read. Set in a small, remote town in England with the main buildings being an inn, a police station and a church. It is surrounded by fields, cliffs and the sea. For some reason when visualising the fields and the inn I imagined the setting to be similar of that in ‘An American Werewolf in London’. The only difference being is that this novel is about vampires.

Keira was an interesting character from the beginning, having become a police officer so young and with high ambitions. When she decided to take on the murder cases and those of missing people in the Ragged Cove one of the first places for her to visit was, of course, the police station. With a very limited workforce and the sergeant sitting smoking a pipe and wearing slippers in this remote town, I couldn’t help but imagine ‘Heartbeat’ and ‘Hamish Macbeth’.

As the story unfolds it covers many readers favourite genres. For me, it began as a drama, turning into a thriller, horror, part romance and throughout is quite adventurous with a few action scenes in there too. It is an exciting read at a nice pace. There is always something interesting happening.

Tim O’Rourke’s love of modern music really shows as he mentions some songs and artists, including Adele.  This gives the story a more current feel to it. However, with phone lines down, population low, and the remote setting it also feels quite eerie, with an older feel to the story too. The difference between the setting feeling older, but with modern characters and music is exciting.

Initially, I would have rated this novel four stars but towards the end something happened that I didn’t expect and I thought that it was slightly too much for the story. This may be ignorant on my part as there are more stories in this series and it could be that what I am referring to will pick up in the next book. Maybe I have been harsh and should have given this novel four stars as was intended.

I will be reading the sequel, ‘Vampire Wake’, next.

Reviewed by Caroline Barker