The Watcher by Jeanne C. Stein

Anna Strong is a female vampire bounty hunter. She’s a newly made vampire that obtained her powers after being attacked by a master vamp. As we saw in Blood Drive (Book 2) she’s still trying to walk the fine line between retaining her humanity and satisfying the blood lust that vampires are often subjected to.

In this installment of the series (Book 3) Anna mistakenly shows the violent side of herself to two humans while attempting to rescue someone. You see vampires have two personas or “faces”: the one that they show humans and the one that comes out when they become violent and out of control. Anna showed her vampire face to the humans which makes her a prime target for the Revengers, the human group that hunts down and kills vampires. As a result, the chief of police, a fellow vampire, orders her to go underground for her own safety.

There are quite a few plotlines present in this book. Stein successfully blends mystery and suspense into each of them:

• Max, Anna’s DEA boyfriend, has suddenly gone missing. This may be linked to the fact that:
• The Mexican drug lord that Max was working to put away has recently escaped apprehension from federal authorities. He realizes Max is responsible for his near capture is hell bent on finding Max in order to exact a little revenge.
• A mysterious FBI agent is also seeking Max for questioning and thinks Anna knows where Max is hiding.
• Anna’s shape shifter Mexican friend Culebra appears to be in trouble. This worries Anna greatly because he’s someone that can take care of himself.
• A crazy witch plans to summon a demon and unleash it’s powers on humankind. She also thinks the event will go down near Culebra’s bar in Mexico.
• Someone is trying to kill Anna and possibly her bounty hunter partner as well.

So when the chief of police tells Anna to disappear she chooses to hide out in Mexico and do a little investigating at the same time. That’s what I like about Anna: she’s a smart heroine. Yes, she’s incredibly stubborn and not without her flaws, but she’s head and shoulders above those ridiculous heroines that walk blindly into a dark alley with a broken heel and a cell phone that doesn’t work and literally wait for the bad guy to jump out at them.

Kudos go to Jeanne Stein for successfully juggling so many plotlines in the book. Lots of writers wouldn’t have a clue about pulling all of these storylines together into one 291 page piece of work. Stein does it seamlessly and maintains a proper balance of action and suspense to the very end. Since I read the book over the course of a few weeks I had to backtrack a couple of times in order to get back up to speed but I sometimes have to do that when the storylines are less varied. This book falls firmly into the action-adventure urban fantasy subgenre and is another winner for Stein.