This book is both twisted and memorizing at the same time. It has never crossed my mind that people actually do steal items including body parts from crime scenes or accidents. Reading this book, I could imagine it being a storyline on Law & Order or Criminal Minds or any other crime show.

Instantly, I was hooked by everything about this story from the characters to the plot. I could not stop reading. Colt's obsession to find this accident victim's foot was compelling, once you learned why. Than there is the fetish of bring a "vampire". Markus wants nothing more than to be immortal. To achieve this he has found the perfect blood donor. The lengths that Markus goes as well as his obsession with body parts is freaky. I found Markus to be weird but interesting. As, you can tell I was a little "obsessed" myself with this book. This was a one day read for me. I look forward to checking out more books from this author. ( )

Colt is a paramedic intern who gets too attached to his patients. During a call to a freak accident where a beautiful Jane Doe loses a foot he promises that she will be OK. When she is being loaded into the helicopter the police and Colt search franticly for her missing foot. He spots a goth 'vampire' in the crowd and feels that he has taken it.
This book tells the story of three people and how their lives come together. The problem is that I didn't like any of them and the story was very far fetched and in the end gift wrapped for a nice, quick ending. ( )

While the main character in this story is well developed I had a hard time dealing with his personality. Colt is a man who has lost his mother and father to tragedies beyond his control and now as a California Paramedic her is out to "save the World." He soon learns that there is more than meets the eye in his latest endevor. He is unable to save a young girl and in the struggle to save her no one notices her foot is missing. Colt decides it is his quest to find the missing foot and find out who this unidentified girl is. While investigating he finds out there are some real freaks out there, but Colt does some things in the name of investigating that could get him in serious trouble and he does not seem to care. I found Colt to be a bit irritating. ( )

The book has 3 main characters and the story focuses on each with about equal amounts of focus. So there's about 75 pages about each character. You'd think this would provide a detailed characterization for each of them, but it is mostly just stereotype behavior.

The paramedic lost his mother, his father, then his mother again - so he compensates by trying to "save the world". His motivations around looking for the dead girl's foot were not really sensible... even if we accepted his abandonment issues as prime motivators.

The Chinese girl is traditional. Low self esteem because she's Chinese in America even though she's doing doctoral work. I don't think someone able to live in a foreign city so far from home and work at such a high academic level would also be so insecure. She is a researcher, not a kitchen staff.

And the bad guy... well, he was creepy and well-written for the first half of his story, then the story went off into some body part black market thread and the rest of his story was spent in drug-induced craziness. I think this foray into drug use actually detracted from his character - he was bad and sick enough as it was, making him "high" or crazy just took it into silly realm. He would much more frightening as he was, without making him turn to insane behavior at the end.

Ultimately, the stories of these three characters are woven together, and everything is wrapped up with a nice little bow.

Unfortunately, the author drove too far to get the bow - there is too much stretching to make the stories fit, too many stereotypes used in developing the characters, and not enough "personality" in any of the characters that will make you give a hoot what happens to any of them. ( )

Kurt Kamm’s Code Blood relates the experiences of rookie paramedic, Colt Lewis, in the unfamiliar world of darkest Los Angeles. A transplant from Wyoming following the death of his father, Colt lives in the unfamiliar world of the homeless, Goths, and wealthy vagrants as he waits to pass muster as a firefighter and paramedic. Worst of all, he has difficulty separating his own feelings from the tragedies he has to deal with as a firefighter-paramedic. Kamm captures many of the nuances faced daily by the brotherhood of firefighters and casts these details against the underworld of LA’s Goth scene and wanna be vampires. The story is believable and well researched. The characters are compelling. I’m intrigued by the story set in the world of fire fighters. I recommend this book to others even though the vampire/Goth storyline would not be my first choice for a cold purchase with no prior experience with Kamm’s writing. I am sufficiently intrigued that I will seek out his other works. ( )