High Bloods

By: John Farris

Narrated by: Fred Filbrich

It happened quickly. Overnight, the greater Los Angeles area found itself in the horrifying grip of a werewolf epidemic. Twenty-eight days of the month, those who change are no different from those who have managed to stay uninfected - the normals, the High Bloods. But every full moon, they become the most ravenous creatures mankind has ever seen.

A new law-enforcement agency keeps tabs on those whose blood runs Lycan. Rawson is a agent for Lycan Control, making sure all the afflicted are found, monitored, and kept locked up the night they change. But the Lycans in Hollywood have risen to cult-like proportions, and Rawson’s job is getting tougher.

One night a woman changes right in front of Rawson. And it’s not a full moon. Someone deep in the bowels of Hollywood has managed to rewrite the rules of the werewolves’ existence. Battling a rising tide of Lycan-rights activists and a growing population of those who choose to become Lycan, Rawson must carve a path to the top of the Lycan food chain before all hell breaks loose.

©2020 John Farris (P)2020 David N. Wilson

Werewolf Police Precedural

A glitzy gaudy werewolf mythos informs social thriller elements. High Bloods invests heavily on setup and world building which does some interesting things with werewolf tropes, like a werewolf religion or legal/social stratification, but often feels too political or systems based. The plot itself feels very character centered to a point it sometimes comes across as meandering in being so socially focused at the cost to conflict; and the characters feel like generic types within the fractions (too police procedural). "Chicky might have infected Buckee with LD disease..." type of stuff that seems maybe gossipy questioning each person's role relative to the side they represent but not visceral or endearing to the characters. The narrator has a hard boiled detective vibe which largely helps the material along.

Not enough Teeth or Bark.

A very lazy attempt at merging Sci-Fi and Hard boiled mystery under an even lazier premise of a lycanthropy plague. This kind of world building needed a lot snappier and engaging plot, characters and dialogue than what's here and that's a shame. I struggled to finish it, and ending up fast forwarding from the middle to the end with no surprise of its outcome.
The author has done much better with his horror novels.