After weeks spent on The Alexandria Quartet, this went down like a bomb. I read the damn thing in a day, so fast-moving, slick and smooth is the story and the prose.

The Radleys reside in a compact and assured British suburb, abstaining vampires trying to live a moral life and suffering all sorts of miseries as a result of repressing their natures and appetities. Unfortunately they have not so far told the teenage kids why they're always hungry and have to wear sun-block and suffer rashes and headaches and why animals don't like them. Which is why one night at a party an unfortunate incident leads to a bloody outcome and things start to fall apart, not least when Uncle Will, most definitely a non-abstaining vampire, turns up to provide his unwelcome double-edged assistance.

So it's all a satire of power, privilege, responsibility and repression, maturity and sacrifice. Fair enough, vampires nowadays are more metaphors than monsters. They've been AIDS, homosexuality, corporate and political corruption and Mormoms. Heck, right now they're a metaphor for my uncontrollable craving for a few squares of chocolate, so why not middle-aged suburban conformity? As a parent, the idea of how we inadvertantly harm our children when we try to help and protect them, and simple mistakes have terrible consequences, hold a particular potency, so it certainly worked for me.

Anyway, it's fun, gleeful, clever and I enjoyed the heck out of it.