Werewolf Smackdown

Felix Gomez is going through a mid-undead-life crisis. In Mario Acevedo’s Werewolf Smackdown, his fifth in the Gomez series, Gomez—Denver’s vampire private investigator—questions the meaning of a supernatural existence: How do you maintain your humanity without a heartbeat? How do you entice a woman home from the bar if you sleep in a coffin at the local mortuary? 

The novel follows Gomez to Charleston, S.C., where he meets with Eric Bourbon, a cutthroat Southern lawyer and werewolf. Bourbon is preparing to do battle with another werewolf leader for control of the low-country territory, and seeks Gomez’s help in fighting the rival clan. Gomez refuses, citing strict vampire code that forbids interfering with werewolf affairs. But, just as he’s leaving, two unknown vampires ambush him (by dropping a giant fiberglass crab on his head), convincing Gomez to stay in town and investigate the assassination attempt further. He also begins to worry that the brewing war could spill into the human world, endangering the secrecy that protects all supernaturals. 

Charleston, although the choice lacks in subtlety, is an appealing location for a werewolf civil war. Acevedo—sometimes with delicacy, sometimes with brutal caricature—exposes the intricacies of Southern dialect from an outsider’s perspective. Bourbon, in particular, is an expert in the Southern tradition of masking insults with a charming accent: “Like he was reading poetry when he was really giving me the backhand,” Gomez describes. 

The series works well as an absurdist satire, re-working the crime genre’s typical ex-military front man into Gomez, a smart-ass whose arch-nemesis is a vampire confined to a wheelchair. But Smackdown lacks in suspense and careful plot turns; Acevedo’s twists are too convenient to believe and he can’t escape the predictability of the serial hard-boiled format. The imminent threat of the werewolf war is never really established, making the value of Smackdown entirely dependent on Gomez’s personality.