Justin Cronin

With the third Twilight film due in theaters and a new season of True Blood set to steam up HBO, worldwide vampire fever is due for a major resurgence this summer. That’s certainly the hope of publisher Ballantine Books, which, at the height ofTwilight-mania, bet $3.75 million on virtually unknown Houston author Justin Cronin and his proposed trilogy of novels about a literal worldwide vampire fever. The first of those novels, The Passage, introduces a new, highly literary voice to horror fiction, one that has no problem taking 200 pages to introduce his post-apocalyptic bloodsuckers. The terror builds steadily from there, stopping occasionally for Cronin to pose some head-scratchers about the nature of humanity. Mormon abstinence porn this ain’t.   

Updated 06/09/2010