The Vampire Hunters

For ages 12+. While staying with his grandparents, fifteen-year-old Jonathan 'Scooter' Keyshawn tries to join the Graveyard Armadillos, the nearest thing to a gang available in Gunstock, Texas. The Armadillos, an uneven assortment of some half-dozen local youths, have planned a novel first exploit for him: helping to prove that reclusive moviemaker Marcus Chandler is a vampire. Chandler avoids the sun and is unnaturally pale; and in the words of ringleader Garrett Brashear: Never seen a white African-American. But Chandler's explosive reaction when Scooter catches him in a Polaroid's flash sends the group scattering into the night-time swamp... and not quite all of them come out. Marcus Chandler has his own set of problems. Besides suffering from the disease that makes his skin pale and his eyes red, he has a most unwelcome fan: Lucius Shade, who followed him from Los Angeles. It seems that Chandler and some friends have developed a method of filming that enables vampires to appear in movies. And while Shade has eternity to convince Chandler to co-operate with him in applying that technology, he really doesn't want to wait that long... The focus is on plausible and engaging teenagers' perspectives. The abilities of the vampire himself offer a few interesting twists (he's quite the shapeshifter), but for the most part the appeal of 'The Vampire Hunters' is not in gratuitous novelty but in a few kids' determination to overcome the odds and set things right.