My original Blood Street audiobook review and many others can be found at Audiobook Reviewer.

What happens when vampires cross into the path of a mob boss? Blood flows freely on both sides!

Alexei, a centuries old vampire loves to spend time in the limelight and with beautiful people. He selects his victims with care much like a serial killer. He selects the wrong victim early on and madness ensues. Enzo Salerno’s man is viciously murdered and now he wants the man responsible to pay with his own life. Salerno runs his business in the style of the old-fashioned Italians – with a vengeance! At first suspecting a retaliating mob hit, Salerno sends his scores of men to the street to find who the responsible party is and exact revenge. Then he discovers there really are vampires!

Magnus, the leader of the brood of vampires and Alexei, finds he must try to negotiate with the mob boss and the FBI in order to protect his brood. Alexei’s growing paranoia along with jealousy pushes things further and escalates the deadly encounter. Salerno successfully strikes fear in the heart of the vampires. Both sides retaliate with a ferociousness that is mind-boggling!

This is not your predictable tale of man vs vampires; it is full of twists and turns leaving you stunned at the ending. Carl Alves takes a common theme (man vs vampire) and makes it fresh and unique. My expectations were that this book was going to be like so many other vampire books but instead I found so much more! Alves takes the story beyond the norm but keeps it realistically grounded through the human characters.

I found this book to be highly intriguing in many different ways. Alves builds the story around the conversion to vampirism method, the personality and mentality of Alexei and the characters dancing around one another exacting revenge and delivering messages in a vile and vicious manner. This is a good book, one that I would listen to again and highly recommend to anyone who enjoys the darker side of vampires and humankind as well as anyone who loves action! It well written and thought out, there are no holes or issues.

Steve Williams did an exceptional job of narrating; the different accents were spot on and difficult – Philly brogue and Old Russian. He never messed up or became confused. I thought he did a wonderful job. He used his voice to infect the listeners with excitement, fear and danger. He also inflected confidence and weakness when appropriate. Williams pronounced the words properly and clearly.

Anyone who loves action and adventure as well as vampires, this is your book!

Production quality of the audiobook was very good, there were no issues or concerns.

Audiobook was provided for review by the author. ( )

3.5 stars

The story has a lot of promise, and the plotting helps.

Synopsis: a rogue vampire is causing a lot of problems in Philadelphia, with both the established vamp brood, the Mob, and the law. What to do?

I like the shifting alliances, and that all 3 main groups have both (semi)admirable characters and loathsome ones. The Mob contingent was especially effective this way.

Unfortunately, none of the characters really came to life themselves; they had their basic character descriptions, and then reacted more according to the needs of the plot than with internal motivations. I think Alves tried to bring more life to them- certainly his Mob boss is somewhat more complex than is usual for criminal kingpins- as is his second-in-command, Sophie.

...And that brings me to the main women, who are 100% physically gorgeous. Some are smarter than others- a decent differentiation- but they all start out as 10+++ on the looks scale. AND, what's more- even the most capable and intelligent ones are 100% willing to throw things over for Their Man (or Vamp, as the case may be). The secondary women can be shrewish, but are generally also well-nigh-perfect physically. What- no old women? None who have put on weight from all that Italian cooking they're doing?

Back to the men: I don't really see Enzo, the Mob boss, having a lot of patience with the mess his subordinates seem to make fairly regularly. He went into the Mob vs legit biz because he couldn't stand the rules... and yet, as the Mob boss, he has no choice but to put up with pretty sketchy "soldiers", which he can't even effectively fire. We see less of management challenges with the law, but similar seems to happen there.

And the vamps? It simply does not make sense that Magnus, the Head Vamp, would put up with so much crap from the rogue, especially when the rogue is directly challenging his leadership. Family? OK, maybe, at first. But if Magnus was half as good a leader as he is described as being, he would not let the rogue be the reason that half or more of his brood died. Especially considering the challenging.

So there's a lot of it that is not great. I'll also add the copy-editing, or the lack thereof; lines are "toed" not "towed", unless you are shipboard, for example, and that's only one of many- the funniest was when Alves clearly meant "wine and dine", but instead it was printed as "whine and dine"- rather different!

The language is often raw, but I'd expect that of gangsters. There is also much gore.

In short: the premise and the shifting and morphing alliances are solid and fascinating. The characterization- especially combined with meeting the needs of the plot- and the writing, could both use work. It would help if behavior did not often seem so arbitrary.

I received this book in exchange for writing an honest review. ( )

I was given this book in exchange for an honest review.

I have never read a book that has both vampires and the mob, wasn't sure if I was going to like it. I was right I didn't like it, I was amazed by the story. I like the authors style and I found myself unable to put my Kindle down. It is a fast-paced action story that will leave you on the edge of your seat wondering what is going to happen next. I look forward to reading more from this author in the future. ( )

This book was really surprising to me. I love mafia books and films but I have never been much of a fan of vampire fiction. However the combining of the two genres worked surprisingly well and kept me invested in the story the whole way through. I would highly recommend this book. ( )