The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires

by Grady Hendrix

Grace gave Patricia a bag of wrapped leftovers, then reached into the drawer of her front hall table, pulled out a thick envelope, and tucked it inside. “Merry Christmas,” she said. “I don’t want to argue about this.” Patricia put the bag on the table and opened the envelope. It was stuffed with a thick sheaf of worn twenty-dollar bills. “Grace—” she began. “When I got married,” Grace said, “my mother gave me this and told me that a wife should always have some of her own money set aside, just in case. I want you to have it now.”

He left no one behind, no children, no shared memories, no history, no one told stories about him. All he left to mark his passing was pain, and that would fade over time. The people he’d killed would be mourned but the people who loved them would move on. They would fall in love again, have more children, grow old, and be mourned by their children in turn. Not James Harris.

If this were a book it would have been called The Mysterious Disappearance of James Harris, but it wouldn’t be a good mystery because Patricia already knew its solution: the mystery of what happened to James Harris was Patricia Campbell.

What had been destroyed made what remained that much more precious. That much more solid. That much more important.

Rebecca (Daphne du Maurier, 1938)

IN COLD BLOOD (1966) AND THE EXECUTIONER’S SONG (1979) When people try to justify the appeal of true crime, these are the books they cite. Capote’s account of the Klutter family killings launched a cottage industry of movies, books, more movies, and even more books, but it still stands as a great read. Norman Mailer’s account of Gary Gilmore’s decision not to oppose his own death sentence for the murder of two men in two separate robberies won a Pulitzer but is long-winded and exhausting, like Mailer himself.

If you want to read the sweaty, disquieting, elegiac masterpiece of the genre, no book does it better than Stranger.