Marcus Sedgwick, A Love Like Blood (2014)

It’s Paris in late ’44,
and nearly the end of the war.
The novel’s narrator
looks into a crater
and isn’t the same any more.

From that moment on his life’s cursed.
He sees a man slaking his thirst
by drinking the blood
from a girl’s fresh-dead bod,
(we think he’s a vampire at first...)

Fast forward to March '51.
Our guy’s back in France on his own.
He spots the blood toper
whilst eating his supper:
a lifelong obsession's begun.

With dread that he cannot assuage
he follows the haematophage
from café to home
to Cambridge, to Rome
for page after page after page.

In decades that follow he chases
the guy through all sorts of dark places,
past scenes European
both posh and plebeian
pursuing his bloody red traces.

It turns out he’s not Nosferatu,
this diner who likes a-la-carte goo.
I thought about slating
this twist—zero-rating—
but realised I hadn’t the heart to.

The book's a quick read, as a gory
‘blood cries from the ground’ kind of story.
It has no pretensions
to deeper dimensions:
but that doesn’t make it deplore-y.

A grisly and violent gazette, a
purple prose Gothic French letter.
It’s fine, in its way.
though I would still say
that Hannibal does this stuff better.