Three gruesome deaths have taken place within two weeks, every one of them a major Hollywood star: an Oscar winner, an ingénue, and an action hero.
Beverly Hills Police Detective Peter King has been around the Los Angeles area for a long time. While the seasoned cop is more than familiar with the famous actors and actresses in town, he doesn’t know that they actually belong to a long established network of vampires – or that his new acquaintance, the beautiful and mysterious Ovsanna Moore, is their leader, or the Chatelaine of Hollywood.
A Long, Long History
Ovsanna Moore is a 500 year old vampire, who has faked her own death countless times and come back as her “daughter” and “grand daughter.” Luckily, she resides in a town where no one looks their age, and she resurfaces with new identities each time.
And a Mystery
When her movie production studio, Anticipation Studios, is rocked with three sudden and gruesome murders, it’s soon discovered that all three victims share a connection to the “Scream Queen,” Ovsanna Moore.
Detective King is immediately dispatched to her home to investigate the “Cinema Slayer” killings. King soon learns that there is something different about Moore, including her somewhat odd relationship with her personal assistant, Maral McKenzie.
He suspects that Moore might be behind the homicides, or is setting her up, and that there’s something she is not telling him. In addition, McKenzie’s records show that, when she first moved to Los Angeles, she was involved in a murder investigation herself, stabbing and nearly decapitating a man who attempted to attacked her.
Moore and King continue a sort of cat and mouse chase, each one telling their story in alternating chapters in the novel, as more murders take place. Each of the crimes is more gruesome than the last, and eventually Moore is confronted by the Vampyres of Hollywood herself and is told she must either solve the mystery or “die” and resurface somewhere else.
About Adrienne Barbeau and Michael Scott
As a film, television, and Broadway star, Adrienne Barbeau's career spans 40 years. Genre fans know her from The Fog, Creepshow, Swamp Thing, and Escape From New York. She was nominated for a Tony for creating the role of Rizzo in “Grease” and starred as Maude's daughter in the series Maude and as Ruthie the Snake Dancer in HBO's Carnivale. She is the author of the best-selling memoir “There Are Worse Things I Could Do.”
Michael Scott is one of Ireland's most prolific authors. His young adult bestseller, The Alchemyst, spent sixteen weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Mark Burnett (Survivor) is producing the film for New Line Pictures.
Barbeau, Adrienne and Scott, Michael
Vampyres of Hollywood
New York, Thomas Dunne Books, July 8, 2008
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