Anyone paying attention to the horror genre of late ought to be aware that there are just as many women writing horror as men. In fact, there may even be more and they're covering all the genres from cosy horror to extreme horror. A majority of my favourite horror novels of the past few years have been by women and I'm loving the different perspectives that they bring to bear. The reason I mention this here is because all of those have been accessible to me as a man. This is a little less so because it's using vampires to tell a story that initially feels like chick-lit but grows into a powerful look at generational abuse. And suddenly I don't understand the references.

In its way, 'We Love the Nightlife' is as exotic to me as books from far flung countries like 'Nothing But Blackened Teeth', 'The Devourers' or 'Island Witch'. I had no idea who Johnny Castle was. I've never heard of 'Made in Chelsea'. I don't know what French 75s, Hermès ties, or WKD alcopops are. When the lead characters start up a nightclub and call it Hey Mister because of a song, I was left in the dark as to which one. I thought "chaise lounge" was a typo until I realised that it's accepted in American English and it's the American character who uses it, even if she lives in London, so that's fair. I've lived in Arizona for twenty years but I still spell everything the British way.

This American character is Amber Borkenhagen, who grew up in small town Wisconsin but chose to move to London to become Amber Wells, wife of Malcolm. It turns out that London was a better fit than Malcolm, because he reads history for fun and she dances in discos. Their differences are far beyond their nationalities and it's not shocking to find they're no longer together. She didn't leave him for another man, though. Technically, she left him for a woman but not in the way that sounds. She meets Nicola Claughton at Tramp and they become friends. Before long, Nicola turns her into a vampire so they can both disco dance forever.

Of course, that's not the happily-ever-after that it initially seems. Amber never wants to return to Malcolm, who moved on after her disappearance and married again, not once but twice. However, he's the only link she has to her former life, so she keeps tabs on him and eventually orchestrates a way for the two of them to meet again, forty some years on. It isn't a substantial meeting, merely a fleeting moment, but it's enough for Nicola to close that road down with a vengeance. He's soon murdered in his bathroom but Amber finds out and just knows whodunit. So the intrigue begins.

For a book that initially seems so light and fluffy, almost the literary equivalent of disco, this has many depths. We learn a lot about Amber and Nicole, who both tell this story in alternating point-of-view chapters. Nicole's start in 1979, when she meets Amber, and move on from there to fill in a lot of how she saw their years together. A few go even further back, to 1835, when she was a child, to show us where she came from. Amber's are present day, as we watch her put plans into motion to leave Nicole and forge a new undeath for herself somewhere else, maybe with Roddy, her new boyfriend, when he moves to New York at the end of the year.

Of course, we learn a lot about Amber and Nicole as a relationship, not just as characters of their own. It's an interesting relationship, because there's nothing sexual between them, but it's even more substantial than Amber's marriage. She has much more in common with Nicole than she did with Malcolm and she's lived with Nicole for much longer. The traditional gift for a forty-five-year anniversary is sapphire, but Amber isn't remotely in a sapphire mood, even before she finds out a lot more about what's happened during those decades.

It's easy to see what Amber and Nicole have as a marriage, even though it isn't one. It's certainly the usual framework we'd see when controlling behaviour comes up. Usually that's by a boyfriend (or girlfriend) or a husband (or wife). Occasionally it's by a father (or mother). Croft applies it to a vampire and her maker, who really serves as both mother and wife. Nicole created what Amber is today, just as our mothers give birth to us, and she's lived with her and shared her life with her for almost half a century. And so Nicole is both controlling parent and spouse and Amber wants out, an immortal victim seeking freedom.

Potential escape opens up new avenues not only for Amber but for the author, who's able to build on the vampire mythology she's created. We learn pretty early that most of the legends are false. Sure, these vampires are almost immortal, killed only by the sun (ironically, given that that wasn't the case in 'Dracula'), but, hey, that's no hardship when your life is spent in discos and nightclubs. That means that self-healing and anti-aging are things, as is the need to be invited, but garlic and crosses mean nothing and they can see their reflection in mirrors, which is kind of important for a vampire diva. How else could they put on make-up? Of course, they also drink blood.

With the built-in mythology comes a growth in scope. Suddenly it's not just Amber and Nicole, the only two vampires we know about for the longest time. Amber looks into her predecessors, those women who Nicole turned before her, to see if they were able to leave. That leads her to Tamsin, a vampire who now lives with her own older equivalent, Margeaux. Eventually, we learn about male vampires like Pierce over in Wapping, and how they live their undeaths. These characters go on to play major parts in the story, not least because Nicola starts up a nightclub of her own and, to the surprise of Amber, brings in Margeaux and Tamsin as partners.

By this point, the intrigue is palpable. There's a spoken reality that everyone's following, but we have to ask ourselves whether anyone's actually doing so. Are they taking it all as read or are they forming their own plans? There are wheels within wheels, as they say. One of the best scenes is an awkward confrontation in which two different characters realise that they had both orchestrated the exact same plan, for completely different reasons, unbeknownst to either of them. There are so many plans that we can't help but conjure up more that turn out to not be there, but I have no problem with that. It's probably why I didn't see the eventual twist coming. Or the other one.

The last time I read a horror novel heavily doused in chick-lit it also revolved around vampires, which was Rachel Harrison's 'So Thirsty'. While that was set up well, it lost me halfway through because the author let her story get too loose. Rachel Koller Croft set her story up well, too; but chooses to tighten it at the halfway point and continue to tighten it all the way to the highly cinematic finalè. That makes it a much better book for me, however many references I completely failed to get and had to look up later. I did get the sweep of the story and the intrigue and the generational abuse. The latter is a big deal for me right now and the potential for escape is affirming.

Croft has only written one other book, as far as I can tell, 'Stone Cold Fox', which is a mystery and a thriller rather than a horror novel. I haven't read it, but it seems that it covers similar ground in a different genre framework. ~~ Hal C F Astell