They Drink Our Blood by Lucy Leitner
Blood Bound Books, 2025
ISBN: 9781940250700
Available: Paperback, Kindle edition
Buy: Amazon.com | Bookshop.org

They Drink Our Blood is another engrossing tale from this author, and it demonstrates yet another facet of her writing style.  Leitner has already proven adept at dystopian satire with Outrage Level 10 and Bad Vibrations, as well as detective stories featuring the lovable, bumbling private investigator Thor Cole in The Girl With The Lollipop Eyes.  However, They Drink Our Blood is a darker, grimmer tale of vampires, and a possibly confused reality.  After the reader is done, they likely still won’t be sure if the overarching narrative was as it was portrayed, or simply the protagonists twisting the evidence to fit their own version of reality.

Taking place entirely in a small, somewhat run-down section of Pittsburgh, it seems that vampires have been living in the USA for years, and are now starting to come out of the shadows, as a few grisly murders around the country seem to attest.  Lisa is a thirty-something, struggling artist living in Pittsburgh, and the murders inspire her to try to do something to protect the people of her neighborhood.  She’s a fascinating character, as we watch her transition from painter to crusader, which alters her whole perspective on her own life.  Before the vampires, she never really had any doubt about what she was doing, and her paintings were her entire reason for being. Once she perceives a threat to her town, her outlook alters substantially, as she finds she may have found her actual purpose.  That means confronting the possibility that all the paintings she did were pointless, despite her telling herself for years that people simply didn’t “get it” when it came to her work. There are a few very good monologues from Lisa throughout the book that help illustrate the character’s uncertainty home in terms of her career choice, and it gives the reader something to ponder over as well, when concerning the overall purpose of art.

Lisa’s few friends and bar buddies in her section of town eventually buy into the idea that the vampires are real and a threat, and decide they need to do something to fight back.  That’s the point where the real skill in the narration comes in, as the evidence for bloodsuckers is rather ambiguous.  Lisa has an Uber passenger and she can’t see his face in the mirror?  Good evidence, but it was dark and he was wearing a hoodie.  Murders with a torn throat, and maybe some bite marks?  Sure, but this is the USA, and there are some real weirdos out there, as we all know.  Besides, the bodies weren’t drained, were they?  Or maybe the cops didn’t reveal that part?  Garlic and silver, classic undead repellents, are suddenly hard to find in the neighborhood, but the author wisely does NOT say if the rest of the country is the same way.  She keeps the focus on one little area, which keeps the level of uncertainty for the reader at a high level, as well as making the story theme much more believable.

Eventually, the story does build to a messy climax, but true to form, it doesn’t resolve the big question: were vampires present and making their move for domination, or were Lisa and her friends part of some sort of mass psychosis, where they saw what they wanted to see?  Was it real, or all in their minds?  Did they just need a scapegoat for their own humdrum, unfulfilled lives?  That’s for the reader to decide, as Leitner plays her cards close right through the end, and never gives it away.  Another well-done tale from an author who is proving to be a chameleon when it comes to writing.  Recommended.

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson.