Ray Garton’s 1987 novel Live Girls is one of the better known vampire novels, although I am just getting around to reading it. It concerns a Manhattan stripjoint/sex club with the homonymous (usually erroneously referred to as eponymous) name of Live Girls. (Just as an aside, I’ve seen strip clubs advertising “Live Girls” before and it always makes me laugh. I mean, what is the alternative?). What sets this club apart from others is all the employees are vampires who prey on the clientele. The story concerns some patrons who fall into the clutches of the vamps, and the struggles of a few to destroy them.
Live Girls is a gonzo, over-the-top ride. Many literary deconstructionists have analyzed Bram Stoker’s classic Dracula as an extended metaphor for oral sex (think about it), although I never really bought into that theory, and Live Girls extends this metaphor to its logical conclusion as the means for the stripper/hooker vamps to obtain their sustenance. Not badly done, but anyone who blushes at sex scenes probably would want to avoid this, lest their head explodes. Recommended with the caveat the novel is long on sex and gore. There is also a 2005 sequel, Night Life.
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