Tainted Blood

Marquis de Sade #4

by Mary Ann Mitchell

The notorious Marquis de Sade, a fierce and perverse vampire who has tormented countless mortals, arrives in the United States to destroy the woman who has plagued him for years, but instead finds himself trapped in a suburban hell with an all-American family of vampires. Original.

Genres: Vampires, Horror, Fiction

352 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2003

About the author

As a child, Mary Ann Mitchell wrote short stories, essays, and poetry. When she was twelve she sent her short stories to the night editor of The Journal American, who encouraged her to send more. Her mother intercepted the letters and forbade her from writing. Seems some of the family’s dark secrets were oozing onto Mary Ann’s written pages. Her writing became secret and sporadic. Once she completed graduate school, she became a civil servant. Years later her husband asked her what her dream career would be. She quickly answered that she always wanted to be a novelist.

Reviews

[Nikki · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have to reread this soon. I /swear/ I picked this book up at 8 or 9 on a trip to the grocery store, and being a vampire-obsessed babybat, my mom did absolutely /no/ age screening. I have nothing but fond memories for the entirety of it.

[Kelsey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall this book is dark and demented. These vampires are not your young adult romantic vampires. These vampires consist of a dominatrix, a baby vampire named Chuckie (shudders), two hideously evil child vampires, wacky mom and dad vampires (who brought their children over to the undead), a psychotic “vampire slayer” wanting to do nothing but die, and of course the perverted Marquis de Sade .

The creep factor hits high in the Hugheses family. Mr. Hughes had an affair with Marie, the dominatrix and Marques de Sade’s mother-in-law, and ended up being turned into a vampire. He then proceeds to turn his wife and two of the older children. His wife couldn’t help herself and turns the baby of the family also. So now you have a family that only ages in mind (which makes Chuckie the baby extremely creepy). Now Marie is coming for visit to her “American family” and she has a hidden agenda that involves payback to Marquis de Sade in the form of a “vampire slayer”. She knows he will follow her to Hugheses because he just can’t resist the temptation.

One paragraph pretty much sums up this book. From page 188:
“Everything seemed to be in upheaval. His sister was preparing to kill his brother. His brother had killed a little girl. Aunt Marie, who was afraid of nothing, was terrorized by the sight of his little sister. Babette was bonkers. His father wanted to kill his brother, and his mother might be in the basement with a naked Uncle Louis.”

This is my first book (that I can remember) that I have read of Mary Ann Mitchell’s and I do think I need to read some others that involve her Marquis de Sade characters just to understand them. Definitely for the horror vampire genre lovers and for adults only.

[John Bruni · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was better than I thought it would be. I'm not a huge fan of her de Sade series, and I read this one because I was a member of the Leisure horror book club, and they sent it to me a long time ago. However, there's a lot of craziness in this book that I love. An unfaithful husband gets turned into a vampire, and then he turns his wife into a vampire. Together, they turn their three kids into vampires, and that drives these poor kids crazy. Imagine being a toddler for a hundred years. The young boy wants to be a man so badly that he wants to kill his father and inhabit his body. (Oh yeah, and he also wants to have sex with his mom. That's not . . . awkward.) Their daughter can never grow up to be the beautiful woman she wants to be, so she dresses like a slut and wants to kill her brother, who gets all of their mother's attention. Throw de Sade into this mess, and things get really interesting. It's a fun book, but can we please move beyond vampires talking like pompous assholes? De Sade and his mother-in-law have been around for centuries, sure, but in all of that time, do you mean to tell me that their speech patterns haven't changed to modern times? It would seem to me that vampires, who are trying to appear mortal in order to trick their victims, wouldn't want to stick out like the proverbial sore thumb, no?

[Kammie]

I read this book awhile ago. Did not do it for me.I LOVED 1&2. Book 3 the series starting going down, this is book 4. Anyway maybe one day I will start over and read the whole series. HARDCORE VAMPIRES ARE THE ONES I LOVE AND THIS SERIES HAS THEM.

[Lindsay · Rating 1 out of 5]

This felt like Goosebumps with adult themes. A few of the characters died, but not enough.

[Vicky · Rating 2 out of 5]

Silly and ridiculous.