Kitty and the Midnight Hour

by Carrie Vaughn

Warner, 288 pages, $6.99

So, last night when I should have been doing all those pesky things like paying bills I decided to peruse the “to read” pile for something more interesting. I hit the jackpot with Ms Vaughn’s debut fantasy novel. Part fantasy, part mystery this is exactly the type of novel I enjoy. Once I started I couldn’t put it down.

Kitty, a late night DJ on a local Denver radio station is still coming to terms with being a werewolf and assessing her place in the pack. One evening she inadvertently turns her radio show into a late night talk show for the supernatural much to the dismay of both her pack leader Carl and local vampire head honcho Arthur, who hires a hit man to kill Kitty on-air. Talk about a ratings boost!

Toss in pack problems as Kitty becomes more alpha and less subservient to the pecking order, a murder mystery involving an apparently supernatural serial killer, a bounty hunter who specializes in supernatural prey (including his unfulfilled hit on Kitty) who is now helping Kitty search out the murderer, a mysterious traveling faith healer who promises to cure the werewolves and vampires of their afflictions, a mysterious clandestine government program, the unique problems surrounding how to tell your mom you can’t attend a cousin’s wedding held on the morning after the full moon without also telling her you are a werewolf, and, oh yes, the growing success of her radio talk show as it reaches more markets via syndication since her on air confession that she is a werewolf.

The supernatural people in her world are neither the infallible or the noble misunderstood characters often seen in such literature, the pack leader has some very human weaknesses and he has the same type of issues with his mate that many a human male has. The police are intelligent instead of being one-dimensional bad guys and even the fanatics (on both sides of the fence) are believable instead of easy stereotypes.

This is the first of a series, the second book Kitty Goes to Washington is excerpted at the end of this story, and I look forward to more of Kitty’s adventures. Highly recommended - Stephanie L Bannon