
The Lesser Dead
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Narrated by:
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Christopher Buehlman
Christopher Buehlman excels in twisting the familiar into newfound dread in his genre-bending novels. Now the acclaimed author of Those Across the River delivers his most disquieting tale yet.
The secret is, vampires are real and I am one. The secret is, I'm stealing from you what is most truly yours and I'm not sorry.…
New York City in 1978 is a dirty, dangerous place to live - and die. Joey Peacock knows this as well as anybody - he has spent the last 40 years as an adolescent vampire, perfecting the routine he now enjoys: womanizing in punk clubs and discotheques, feeding by night, and sleeping by day with others of his kind in the macabre labyrinth under the city's sidewalks.
The subways are his playground and his highway, shuttling him throughout Manhattan to bleed the unsuspecting in the Sheep Meadow of Central Park or in the backseats of Checker cabs, or even those in their own apartments who are too hypnotized by sitcoms to notice him opening their windows. It's almost too easy.
Until one night he sees them hunting on his beloved subway. The children with the merry eyes. Vampires, like him…or not like him. Whatever they are, whatever their appearance means, the undead in the tunnels of Manhattan are not as safe as they once were.
And neither are the rest of us.
©2014 Christopher Buehlman (P)2014 Blackstone Audio, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...




















Critic reviews
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Any additional comments?
Let me preface this by saying, as a general rule, I don’t “do” contemporary vampire novels. To be honest, pop-culture has all-but ripped the fangs out of vampires. Few and far between are tales of these monstrous masters of the undead that are actually visceral and scary. I want my vampires to be frightening. I don’t want to fall in love with them. I want to be afraid of them, in those little cowering monkey-places that keep me scared of the dark. I picked this book up on a recommendation and I’m glad I did. Simply put, it is my favorite book of 2016 so far, and in the vein of “scary vampires” it’s a triumph that does not disappoint. Now, the rest of the story…I picked up a copy of “The Lesser Dead” on Audible Audiobook and not only was it my favorite novel of 2016 to-date, it’s also one of the best audiobooks I’ve listened to in years. The book is narrated by the author Christopher Buehlman, and in my experience, authors generally give mediocre performances at best as narrators. Not so with Buehlman’s performance of The Lesser Dead. His characterization and dramatic performance is absolutely first rate. I’ll be comparing other audiobook performances to this one for a very long time to come.
The story itself hit two personal home-runs for me right out of the gate.
First, the vampires were scary. Dark, hungry, scary things that lived and hunted in the shadows of New York. And much to my joy, the only got scarier as the book went along. Which, frankly, was a hell of an accomplishment on the part of Buehlman. More than that though, the characters themselves, the people they’d been in life and the creatures they became in undeath, they were refreshingly, and even at times, upsettingly real. These weren’t all pampered little whitebread vampiric offspring of thoughtful doctors and upper middle class souls. Most of them had raw, dirty, and utterly believable origins. Buehlman did a phenomenal job of bringing the lives they had lived (while living) into their existence as vampires in the underworld ruins of New York City.
Second, it was a period piece, and a masterfully done one at that, set in one of my favorite, iconic settings – 1970s New York. Buehlman’s narrative of New York was alive with the sights, sounds, and smells of the city’s late Sodom and Gamora period. The dirty New York from the ’70s people prefer to talk about in the past-tense.
Remember when I said that Buehlman’s vampires only get scarier as the book goes along? I mean it. Follow the blood flowing in the cracks and gutters to the very end, and I promise you, your skin will crawl while the Rolling Stones “Sympathy For The Devil” echoes in your head. Don’t trust the children…
A solid-gold 5 out of 5 star read. A glorious, nasty reminder of why you fear the dark…
Glorious, nasty reminder of why you fear the dark
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Wow!
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I loved it!
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A different take on vampires
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Outstanding.
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I can't tell you how happy I am to have found this author. I'm in love! On to the next!
Supremely entertaining horror poetry.
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Blown six ways till Sunday!
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surprisingly entertaining and fun
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Brilliant and whack, more please?
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Bloody fun
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