Fat White Vampire Blues

Damn, he was hungry.

Jules stopped his cab, pressed the wobbly rocker switch that jerked the electric windows reluctantly to life, and stuck his head into the humid night air. “Hey, baby. You interested in some dinner?”

–from Fat White Vampire Blues

Vampire, nosferatu, creature of the night–whatever you call him–Jules Duchon has lived (so to speak) in New Orleans far longer than there have been drunk coeds on Bourbon Street. Weighing in at a whopping four hundred and fifty pounds, swelled up on the sweet, rich blood of people who consume the fattiest diet in the world, Jules is thankful he can’t see his reflection in a mirror. When he turns into a bat, he can’t get his big ol’ butt off the ground.

What’s worse, after more than a century of being undead, he’s watched his neighborhood truly go to hell–and now, a new vampire is looking to drive him out altogether. See, Jules had always been an equal opportunity kind of vampire. And while he would admit that the blood of a black woman is sweeter than the blood of a white man, Jules never drank more than his fair share of either. Enter Malice X . Young, cocky, and black, Malice warns Jules that his days of feasting on sisters and brothers are over. He tells Jules he’d better confine himself to white victims–or else face the consequences. And then, just to prove he isn’t kidding, Malice burns Jules’s house to the ground.

With the help of Maureen, the morbidly obese, stripper-vampire who made him, and Doodlebug, an undead cross-dresser who (literally) flies in from the coast– Jules must find a way to contend with the hurdles that life throws at him . . . without getting a stake through the heart. It’s enough to give a man the blues.

Jules Duchon was a real New Orleans vampire. Born and bred in the working-class Ninth Ward, bitten and smitten with the Big Easy.

Publishers Weekly

Vampires have problems, too, as shown in Fox's clever, wisecracking debut that never quite works as the tragicomedy it aspires to be. Taxi-driving vampire Jules Duchon weighs 350 pounds and is still gaining from drinking the blood of the citizens of New Orleans, whose rich, unhealthy diets are teeming with fatty lipids. Obesity's not his only problem. A flashy new black vampire in town-Malice X, a Superfly with fangs-has taken over his turf. Jules turns to Maureen, the super-sized stripper who "made" him for help, and Mo eventually calls on Jules's ex-buddy Doodlebug ("D.B.") for more aid. D.B., a lithe transvestite vampire who has had great success in California as a self-reliance guru, wisely allows Jules to follow his own path-for a while. When it becomes apparent that Jules has a lot to learn about being a vampire, D.B. is there to guide him. While the author pays obvious homage to A Confederacy of Dunces, the humor here fails to rise above the sitcom level. Jules is just plain dumb and his miseries are usually self-inflicted. Characters are mostly caricatures. Relationships and plot complexities-Jules's moral dilemma concerning his victims, his comic-book hero secret identity as the Hooded Terror with D.B. as his sidekick, his plan to turn a band of white supremacists into vampires-don't satisfactorily entwine. Although by the end a lot of blood has been spilled and Jules has learned his lesson in unlife, there's little of real substance to sink your teeth into. Agent, Dan Hooker. (July TK) Forecast: John Kennedy Toole fans looking for more of the same, and willing to settle for less than a masterpiece, should give a boost to this vampire variant. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.