A King's Ransom (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798349620775)

"A complex father-and-daughter dynamic anchors this engaging and offbeat crime thriller. Verdict: GET IT." -Kirkus Reviews

Twenty-two-year-old Holly Ransom is having what professionals might call a bad decade. Her mother was murdered in front of her at thirteen. The killer escaped through the kitchen window like an asshole. Every single authority figure since has advised her to manage her anger. She's managing it just fine... mostly with butterfly knives.

It doesn't help that Los Angeles is basically a supernatural landfill. The city is crawling with vampires high on pixie blood, demons treating closet doors like revolving portals, and an Anti-Vampire Authority that does jack shit except install UV streetlamps that only work half the time. Holly's only coping mechanisms are caffeine, sarcasm, and semi-legal weapons training.

So, when a few chrome-fanged wannabes known as Fang Gang decide to harass a kid outside her favorite coffee shop, Holly does the reasonable thing: she cripples two of them and amputates one's ear.

Unfortunately, this pisses off their deranged Leader, who immediately decides Holly's skull would look great cracked open on the sidewalk. To make matters worse, her dad, Kit, a retired assassin and full-time guilt sponge, accidentally reactivates his murder résumé by dismantling a pack of the same thugs at a gas station. Now the whole family is on the hit list as the city slides toward a supernatural turf war.

Along for the ride are a cast as dysfunctional as the Ransoms themselves, including a snarky, code-switching vampire desperate for a steady job and a frustrated closet monster grappling with eternal bad luck.

Perfect for fans of Jason Pargin and Keith Rosson, this exceedingly weird supernatural noir is a grit-soaked ride through a city where the monsters are just another environmental irritant.