Book Review: Daylight

Reviewed By: Harriet Klausner

Daylight     Amazon US HC Amazon Canada HC
Elizabeth Knox
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Vampire
Ballantine, Apr 2003, $23.95, 356 pp.

New Zealand police officer Brian "Bad" Phelan goes on vacation near the French-Italian border to recover from injuries he received while defusing a bomb. While there, he helps the locals recover the drowned body of a woman, but notices how the victim looks like the twin of someone he met years ago in an eerily similar scenario.

Unable to ignore the doppelganger, Bad begins making inquiries into the deceased, Martine Dardo, but he finds is his unofficial investigation is competing with other inquiries. His efforts lead to a Sister Raimondi. Father Daniel Octave, assisted by scholar Eve Moskelutz, has been looking into the qualifications for sainthood for the WW II heroine Sister Raimondi, killed by Nazis. Meanwhile Eve’s twin sister Dawn studies tongues and looking warily yet actively at the goings on is the vampire Lou Ila.

Whether you read this novel in DAYLIGHT or in the evening, this is one weird tale. The story line seems disconnected yet the talent of Elizabeth Knox pulls it together so that the audience begins to wonder whether God will provide signs that the deceased nun is a saint or whether a vampire is one of God’s creatures?. None of the cast is likable except the poetic vampire, but that is part of the unnatural fun as fans of Ms. Knox will enjoy this non-linear novel that makes a reader struggle to define saint.

Harriet Klausner

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Harriet Klausner