Out-of-State Detective Barbara Atkins isn't given the warmest of welcomes when she arrives at the remote Alaskan town of Deadhart but then she has been sent to investigate the horrific death of a teenager who the townsfolk believe to have been murdered by one of the vampyrs who live in the out of town colony. However, there is little evidence to support this and with tempers running high Barbara is fighting not just the townsfolk whose hatred of the vampyr community is legendary but also the vampyrs themselves whose ancient malevolence is as palpable as it is threatening.

Thanks to this author's atmospheric description of life in small town Alaska I felt as if I had stepped out into the cold and snow with Barbara as she sets about challenging misconceptions and untruths, whilst at the same time she hunts a violent killer who will stop at nothing. In linking the bigotry and hatred of the townsfolk with a similar loathing of humans by the vampyr community you have a combustible situation which threatens to spiral out of control. With its creepy atmosphere and challenging characters, Deadhart, with its community of bigoted townsfolk, and violent vampyrs is very much a central character in this chilling story, and even though the town and its people really scared me, I can't wait to go there again. The cleverly controlled ending of The Gathering certainly hints that there might well be a return visit. Bring it on!

I’ve read a few of C.J. Tudors books and I absolutely loved the drift last year it was one of my favourite reads, so when I saw this I knew I had to read it!
Now this is slighty out of my usual comfort zone I’m usually a straight up thriller reader and when i found out this had vampires in it I was worried I wouldn’t like it. However I was proved wrong and thought it was a great stepping stone into more of a fantasy or supernatural read. The main story is really great and it is all about solving a murder and the whole stories just sprinkled with the vampires so it doesn’t feel too much of fantasy which for me was really great.
Can’t wait to see what she brings out next now!!

I very much enjoyed thriller writer CJ Tudor's turn to schlocky horror in The Drift, and so I was eager to pick up her follow-up, The Gathering. Definite shades of Stephen King here: The Gathering is set in a world where the existence of 'vampyr' colonies is acknowledged and feared, but where laws govern the ways that humans are allowed to interact with them. Culls of colonies can be authorised if they prey on humans, but otherwise locals are expected to leave them alone. Our protagonist, Barbara, is a no-nonsense detective who is, refreshingly, an older lesbian: she travels to a small town in Alaska where a teenage boy has been found with his throat ripped out. Given the town's history of mysterious killings, its inhabitants are keen for Barbara to call for a cull of the nearby vampyrs. But is there more going on here than meets the eye? Sadly, I'd say this is more of a crime novel with a touch of horror than an actual horror novel, and so will appeal more to crime fiction fans. While The Gathering starts well, as Barbara adjusts to the freezing weather and her run-down motel, it swiftly loses much sense of place. I was also frustrated by the lack of worldbuilding - Tudor relies very heavily on existing vampire lore and barely explains her rules (frankly, the lifecycles and biology of vampires are better developed in LJ Smith's Night World series, which is YA from the 90s, and so has the pace and page count you'd expect). Barbara is supposedly an expert on vampyr anthropology, but there's little sense of what that means, as the vampyrs could be replaced by an outcast human community in this novel with little knock-on effect. I got lost in the cast and felt that the climax was merely set-up for what looks likely to be a continuing series, with a number of significant loose ends left trailing. Love vampires, but I won't be reading on.

I've been a fan of C.J. Tudor's books since "The Chalk Man" came out and this is one of her best books yet (I'm yet to read "The Drift" though)

I wasn't keen on reading another novel on vampires but her take on "vampyrs", as she calls them is a mix of fun cliches and unique twists. Set in winter in Alaska, the atmospheric setting drew me in and the sassy MC, Barb had me hooked.

I loved the characters, the rich backstories and the impressive twists in the book. I hope to read more of Brad, Tucker and Athelinda.

Thanks to Netgalley and Michael Joseph for the e-copy!

4.5/5

In Deadhart, a small town in Alaska a teenage boy is found brutally murdered. Detective Barbara Atkins an expert in vampirism is sent to investigate. If the death is down to the recent re appearance of a colony of vampyers then by law a cull will be ordered. With the locals’ minds made up and them calling for Barbara to instigate the cull, she turns to the ex sheriff of the town Jensen Tucker for help. After all, he was the original investigator on a similar case 25 years ago, and people are in fear that the same thing is happening again. As the investigation unfolds and new evidence comes to light, the story is far deeper and darker than Barbara could have imagined.

Brilliant story, very original and well thought out. It’s clear that the author has done her research! Loved the way the plot got more chilling as the book progressed, I couldn’t stop reading I just wanted to find out what was going to happen next! I had no idea how it was going to end!

I've really enjoyed CJ Tudor's books - especially the 'Chalk Man' (still awaiting that TV adaptation that Tudor mentioned years ago now!!)
This book is a real swerve from their previous novels - it's still got that mystery/thriller element but it has the added bonus of... VAMPIRES!
I usually love a Vampire book or film - but I just couldn't extend my belief with this one. It all felt a bit too out of control.
I didn't enjoy this book too much - compare to CJ Tudor's others - but nevertheless still think this would make a great TV/film adaptation.
Bring on the next CJ Tudor book - but who knows where they will go next!!??

I usually love this authors books but unfortunately struggled with this one. I just couldn’t get into it and it failed to keep my attention.

Having delved into every narrative spun by C.J. Tudor with considerable relish, my expectations for "The Gathering" were tinged with eager anticipation. However, while Tudor's latest venture introduces us to an intriguingly dark world where vampires weave through the narrative, it diverges from the electrifying suspense I've come to cherish in her previous works.
"The Gathering" unfolds at a markedly sedate pace, a stark contrast to the brisk, riveting tempos we are accustomed to with Tudor. The novel centres around Barbara, a character whose journey suggests potential expansion into a series—an uncharacteristic move for Tudor, who typically wraps up her tales within the confines of a single book. This new approach, while ambitious, perhaps dilutes the taut, standalone intensity Tudor fans adore.
Moreover, the novel's structure appears somewhat flat, lacking the multidimensional twists that define Tudor's style. Although the conclusion offers some surprises intended to startle and satisfy, they require a bit of cogitation to align neatly with the earlier narrative, and even then, they do not resonate with the seamless ingenuity expected.
Despite these critiques, "The Gathering" is not devoid of merit. Tudor's audacious foray into a vampire-laden universe is commendable, and her narrative craftsmanship remains evident. There are moments within the pages that remind me of her capability to captivate and entertain.
For devotees of Tudor's earlier works, this book might not echo the profound impact of her usual offerings. It was a journey that tested my patience in its early stages, nearly prompting me to set it aside. Yet, perseverance paid off to a degree. Though the novel lacks the characteristic 'wow factor' and left me yearning for the chilling, swift-footed suspense of her previous books, it still showcased Tudor's bold willingness to explore new realms.
In essence, "The Gathering" is a commendable novel with its own merits. Still, it may not satiate long-standing Tudor enthusiasts seeking the shock and awe typically delivered by her pen. It stands as a testament to Tudor's evolving narrative scope, albeit without the usual flare that fans might expect.

Welcome to Deadhart, Alaska, a small town where ‘normal’ people live alongside the Colony of vampyrs.

Barbara Atkinson is a forensic detective from the Forensic Vampyr Anthropology Department. She arrives in Deadhart to investigate a death of a teenager, Marcus Anderson.

Marcus died of a throat wound to his neck and it appears that it was a Colony killing.

The town is desperate for revenge, for a cull.

However, Atkins is very reluctant to authorise one, as something doesn’t sit right with her…

During her investigation, she begins to uncover a possible link between Marcus’s murder with another case which happened 25 years ago. A young man, Todd Danes, was killed by the Colony.

With the hostility of the townspeople on the rise, can Atkins uncover the truth?

I really enjoyed this tense thriller. I can’t really make up my mind whether it’s a horror or thriller- it has a mixture of both genres.

I loved the idea of vampyrs living alongside humans: they’ve adapted and can lead a normal life during the day. I found the idea fresh and innovative.

The ending made me feel like there could be a follow-up to the story? I hope there is.

Thank you to Michael Joseph for approving my NetGalley request to read and review this title.

I have really enjoyed the CJ Tudors novels I have read so far and this is another one I would recommend. She has such a different style of writing, this leans more towards a murder mystery but with supernatural elements. I still had the usual brilliant creepy, unsettling feeling I usually get reading one from this author. I was totally engrossed in this one.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance copy of this ebook.

A small town in Alaska, an out of town detective, a local sheriff, and a dead boy with his throat ripped out. The case points to one group. The remote vampyr colony that live deep in the mountains.
The town locals are calling for a cull of the colony, but the evidence suggests something or someone else is responsible.
The cops need to know which one they are looking for, a brutal killer or a bloodthirsty monster? Either way time is short in this scary small rural town to find a way to end the horror.
Probably the best book CJ Tudor has written to date. I love the way she sets such a tense atmosphere throughout her books.
The story is brilliant in its originality and remote setting, with great characters and scary scenes throughout. She really is a breath of fresh air when it comes to writing horror.
I found this book impossible to put down and highly recommend it.

Bereits der Taxifahrer, der die auswärtige Barbara Atkins vom Flughafen, abholt hat eine festgelegte Meinung zum Todesfall des Jungen, er geht davon aus, dass es jemand aus der nahegelegenen Vampir Kolonie war. Wer einmal menschliches Blut hatte, kann es nach seiner Meinung nicht mehr lassen und sollte besser erschossen werden. Aber Barbara will den Fall mit offener Einstellung untersuchen. Sie soll zunächst für eine Woche bleiben. Die Ereignisse spielen Anfang November, in Deadhart Alaska mit nur fünf Stunden Helligkeit am Tag. Das Taxi bringt sie direkt zur Polizei Stelle und Polizeichef Pete Nicholls. Der Ort ist strahlend hell mit Lichterketten und leuchtenden Figuren geschmückt, eine wilde Mischung aus Halloween und Weihnachten. Ein wahrer Weihnachtsalbtraum. Barbara kommt vom Forensic Vampyr Anthropology Departement. Kurz wird sie auch Arzt der Fangzähne genannt. Sie hat einen Doktor und ist Kriminalbeamtin. Polizeichef Pete Nicholls teilt sich einen Raum mit der Bürgermeisterin, die ihn zur Zeit wegen Personalmangel auch unterstützt. Deadhart ist eigentlich ein ruhiger Ort, es gab lange keinen Mord, doch die Vampir Kolonie ist vor einem Jahr zurückgekehrt. Pete hätte nichts dagegen sie aufgrund des Todesfalles alle auszumerzen, aber Barbara lehnt es ab, das Recht in die eigenen Hände zu nehmen. Der letzte Mord war vor 25 Jahren an Todd Danes. Damals der Fall einer missglückten Wandlung, der von einer unrechtmäßigen Tötung einiger Vampire und der Vertreibung der Kolonie gefolgt wurde. Der damalige Polizeichef war in seinen Bemühungen um Gerechtigkeit gescheitert, doch nach Jahrzehnten sind sie zurück.

Sobald die Ermittlungen beginnen, ist das Buch sehr spannend. Es kommen viele interessante Figuren vor, wie auch der ehemalige Polizeichef Jensen Tucker oder der eingefleischte Vampirjäger Beau. Vieles ist dem Leser rätselhaft, die Atmosphäre ist angenehm gruselig, gerade richtig für mich. Nebenbei wird die Art und Lebensweise der Vampire nach und nach erklärt, ihre Existenz kommt einem ganz natürlich vor.

Schnell stellt sich der Todesfall als komplexer heraus. Barbara muss auf unkonventionelle Hilfe zurückgreifen und kommt auch schnell selbst in Lebensgefahr. Jede Aufdeckung wirft nur wieder Fragen auf. Alte Geheimnisse werden aufgedeckt. Mit einem sehr klassischen gruseligen Setting wird der Show-down eingeleitet. Dann folgt die große überraschende Enthüllung, die man nicht ahnen konnte und die alles erklärt, aber kann das namensgebende Gathering, die ultimative Konfrontation zwischen den Bewohnern und den Vampiren, jetzt noch verhindert werden?! Und sogar nach der finalen Auseinandersetzung und Klärung aller Fakten gibt es noch einige Überraschungen für die Leser und das Ende lässt auf eine Fortsetzung hoffen.

Das Buch konnte mich sehr gut unterhalten. Besonders gefallen hat mir die Figur der Ermittlerin Barbara.

The Gathering by C.J. Tudor
Publication date: 11 April 2024
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 4 stars
Thank you to Michael Joseph and NetGalley for providing me with an e-copy of this book in exchange for an honest review

A small Alaskan town. A missing boy. A brutal murder. A detective brought in from out of state to assist the former sherriff who investigated a similar murder twenty-five years ago. But are they hunting a twisted psychopath - or something even more terrifying?

I am 2 for 2 with C. J. Tudor. I read the Chalk Man last year, and really liked it so I was looking forward to getting to this ARC. Did I read the blurb properly before requesting it? No, of course not! So the fact that this is a supernatural vampire thriller was an unexpected, but not unwelcome, surprise.
This follows a number of well-worn thriller tropes - the small town, tight-knit community, hostile to the investigator dropped in their midst, an incoming storm meaning there is nowhere to go and of course, everyone has at least one secret. But it works; I was hooked and I just wanted to keep reading. I liked our main character, Detective Barbara Atkins - she is clever, resourceful and good at what she does.
The pace was a little uneven to me; after a long set-up (which had plenty of action, twists and turns, so wasn't boring by any means), the ending felt quite short and rushed. Even though the resolution to the mystery was good, it felt a little unsatisfying because of the speed at which everything happened.
This being said, the epilogue hints at this being a series, maybe? I hope so - I'd totally be up for reading more.

‘The Gathering’ is a tale that pulls no punches whatsoever. Crime is not my usual genre of choice, but vampires definitely are, and this is a glorious, gritty combination of the two.

A human boy is dead in a remote Alaskan town, which has a vampire ‘colony’ nearby. Pitchforks are being sharpened as it seems a straightforward case: if a vampire kills a human, the entire colony must be ‘culled’. That’s the law of the United States. Of course with any such crime, it’s not that simple, and lynching is no solution at all.

I realized that I was all in for the journey when our protagonist Barbara (female detective, middle-aged, unfit but thankfully no other distinguishing Literary Police Problems) sits alone in a bar, contemplating the case before her. Just a woman in a strange place, faced with an incredibly knotty problem. Yes, a boy has died, but the widening circle of implications is heavy on her shoulders in this almost alien landscape. The humanity she holds caught me at that moment and never let go.

My attachment became a full-on commitment when the clever writing began to show itself. Because what do small-town Americans do when they go hunting? They take trophies. Which are never explicitly described but when I realized that a discussion was about a vampire’s head above the fireplace… a teenage boy, perhaps? Body parts taken as tokens?! This should be the actions of a Buffalo Bill-esque psychopath, but these are the townsfolk. This is who we are. Which side is the reader on? Who are the monsters?

Readers, we have a truly original drama before us, and in my experience as an old-school vampire fan, it’s both new and unique.

I must say that I was strongly reminded of ‘Twin Peaks’ throughout the book, with the ‘normal for here’ attitudes being challenged by the outsider, and my own eyes trying to make sense of a world very different from our own. The vampire colony clearly symbolises the ‘other’, with parallels to Native Americans displaced from their land by literal colonisers, but the political analogies are never heavy-handed. It quickly becomes clear that the danger about to blow up is mob mentality rather than theoretical racism, and thus the attitudes shown here are sadly very relevant in 2024 (in the UK, it’s been called NIMBYism - Not In My Back Yard). What if those you fight remember a time before your ‘traditions’ were even an idea?

I had the pleasure of attending the UK launch of ‘The Gathering’ last week, and hearing CJ Tudor’s enthusiasm for her work was tremendous. It’s often said that those writers who deal with the darkest subjects are often the loveliest people, and that’s really true here! Research may have been demanding, but the characters and story came together from a place of genuine care and intention (I love that ‘Near Dark’ was a strong touchstone for the tone of the book). This is her latest novel, and I’ve absolutely no doubt that this is an author at the top of her game and loving every minute.

This book ignores genre boundaries and ploughs its own determined path between horror and crime. There’s refreshingly few tropes, with a focus instead on morality and humanity - what that means if you’ve been an outsider for centuries, and how terrifying that might be for predator and prey.

A huge recommend - and like the author, I’m now also pondering casting options for the (fingers crossed!) TV adaptation.

The Gathering is the incredible new novel by C. J. Tudor, who never fails to keep me glued to the pages. Set in a world where humans and vampyrs try to cohabit, it’s a story of murder, secrets, suspicions, discrimination, fear, and hate.

Twenty-five years ago, the small town of Deadhart, in Alaska, was shaken by the horrific murder of a teenager. The townspeople suspect the colony of vampyrs who live nearby and take matters in their own hands, killing and chasing away the colony. Now, the vampyrs have returned and when another teenager is found dead, apparently in the same way as the murder twenty-five years before, the townspeople are out for revenge. Enter vampire anthropologist and detective Barbara Atkins whose role is to confirm whether the vampyrs are responsible for the murder and authorize the “cull” that would sanction the massacre of the colony. Teaming up with the former detective that investigated the first murder, now a recluse, Barbara needs to find out the truth before a war between humans and vampyrs breaks out and more blood is spilled, but the truth is more complex and sinister than she expects…

The Gathering is twisty and full of suspense from the first to the last page. The setting is very evocative: a small town where darkness is a constant companion during the winter months and easily cut off from the rest of the world. The characters are intricate and full of secrets. There are different points of views, but the main character is detective Barbara Atkins. Raised by an abusive and racist father, she is determined to remain impartial during the investigation and follow the rules, despite the town’s pressure for her to approve the cull.

Gruesome, chilling, dark, and gripping: that’s how I would describe The Gathering. I was on the edge the entire time I was reading and it’s not for the fainthearted, that’s for sure. Highly recommended!

CJ Tudor’s The Gathering is a fun horror/mystery novel which is full of tense moments, twists and interesting characters. I loved the small Alaskan town setting and world where Vampyrs are real but kept to small colonies under pressure of culling if they step out of line. This unique world and setting are really what makes this one stand out. It’s unique, creepy, chilling, atmospheric and full of tense moments and twists you won’t see coming. While this works as a standalone, I’d love to read more stories set in this world/setting.

I’m a huge fan of the author and couldn’t wait to read The Gathering. The author is great at writing dark, unsettling fiction. This book is no exception, a dark, unsettling delight. I loved every page. This book offers an interesting take of the popular horror trope – vampires. In this book vampires live among humans and are a sort of protected species. There are even special police officers who investigate murders that appear to have been the work of a vampire colony to determine their guilt or innocence. The small town where the book is set has a vampire colony nearby and not everyone is happy about this or believes vampires and human should or can live in relative harmony. I love horror set in small towns as it tends to be so much darker and unsettling. This is a rollicking horror yarn. I loved it.

Loved it. A police procedural only with vampires. A good change to the vampire lore. Detective Barbara Atkins is sent to Alaska to investigate a murder of a young boy. A well crafted novel with tension between the towns people and the vampires. Thanks to Penquin Random House and Netgalley for a review ARC

Thanks to NetGalley and Michael Joseph/Penguin Random House for providing me with an ARC copy of this book, which I freely chose to review.
C. J. Tudor has become a popular author in the last few years, to the point that one of the other novels, The Burning Girls, has been turned into a TV series, and I have been lucky enough to have discovered her when I read an ARC copy of her first novel, The Chalk Man, and I’ve enjoyed all she has published so far. And this new novel is no different.
Tudor has a great ability to revisit subgenres (mostly within the horror and mystery categories) and give them a new twist, and she is very good at keeping that difficult balance between a gripping plot and a cast of characters that aren’t just standard and forgettable types. She likes to play with our expectations, making us believe we know what is going on, only to pull the rug from under our feet. You might think you are in familiar territory, but you shouldn’t get too comfortable. You are bound to get one or two (nasty) surprises.
So, this is a book about vampires, but these vampyrs (as they are called in the novel), are not the typical vampire we know (and love, or not). They are not immortal (not exactly), they live in their own communities and follow certain rules of behaviour (you shouldn’t kill one of your own kind), and they don’t feed on humans. And, they live in “colonies” close to humans but aren’t supposed to mix and are very limited in what they can do, while the catalogue of what can’t do is very long (they cannot get a proper job or work with humans, they cannot get an education...). There are laws in place to protect them, but not everybody is in agreement with those, and exterminating a whole colony (“the cull”) isn’t that difficult if one can make a good case for it.
This is a police procedural as well, with the difficulty that the action takes place in a remote Alaskan small town, in the middle of a terrible storm, so accessing some of the facilities we are used to in modern police procedurals (CSI, DNA tests, even a post-mortem examination) is “complicated” to put it mildly, and no help from outside is to be expected. So, although the action is set in contemporary times (or thereabouts) in this slightly different universe, the investigators have to do a lot of groundwork themselves and rely on their wits more than on science and hard evidence, so, in some ways, this feels like an old-fashioned mystery.
Within the mystery/thriller genre, this also falls into the category of a small-town mystery, where an outsider (in this case Barbara, a female detective with her own backstory and some personal knowledge of these kinds of communities) arrives to investigate a crime —the murder of a young boy that shows plenty of signs to have been the work of a vampyr— and finds the locals... not exactly forthcoming or welcoming. If you suspect that there will be secrets, mysteries, and hidden truths that many don’t want to face, you’d be right.
We have many memorable characters: Barbara, who isn’t thrilled to take up the job but is determined to do a real investigation and not say what the townspeople would want her to say to just keep the peace, no matter what the cost. She isn’t charming or particularly adept at making friends, and she has to confront a lot of resistance and hostility in her attempts at doing her job. Rita, the mayor of the town, who also helps at the police station and seems to do a bit of everything is a bigger-than-life character; the sheriff, who although not sympathetic to Barbara is determined to help her do the job, gets injured early on and Barbara asks the previous sheriff, Tucker, to help, because the case she’s investigating has many similarities with one that happened 25 years back and Tucker had investigated. Tucker isn’t particularly well-liked and has lived removed from the town since then, but he has connections, knows everybody, and can help. There is also a female pastor who seems determined to get rid of the colony; the two friends of the boy who was killed, who seem to know more than they say; their parents; the owners of the grill and hotel and their daughter; the doctor; a teacher, an old man who was involved in the previous case and who happens to be the grandfather of one of the dead boy’s friends... And yes, of course, we get to know some of the vampyrs as well, Athelinda and her son, Michael (yes, vampyrs can have children, but you’ll have to read the novel to find out more).
The story is told in short chapters, written in the third person, and we mostly follow Barbara in her investigation, but not exclusively. We later also accompany Tucker in his solo detective work, and there are some chapters written in italics interspersed in the story, where we read about a young girl kept prisoner, from her point of view. Readers might suspect who she is, but we only find out (for sure) at the end of the novel, and for those who haven’t guessed, that puts an interesting spin on the story.
There are some pretty scary moments, plenty of action, violence, and bloodshed, and there is nothing cozy or gentle about the story or the language, so readers need to take that into account. It is not the most extreme or gore novel I’ve ever read, but it is not suited to those who prefer a clean and mild read. I’ve said that this is, in many ways, an old-fashioned mystery, and that means there is a lot of going through the clues, trying to piece the evidence together, interrogations, so the pace is not frantic and relentless. There are moments of reflection and we also get to know some details of the previous lives of the characters, as the events bring back memories for the protagonists and the main characters. Despite the general subject, there are touches of humour, sometimes pretty dark, so I wouldn’t say this is a dour, dry, and sad read. Quite the opposite.
Some readers have commented on the use of expressions and words typical of British English that are out of place in a novel set in the USA. I lived in Britain many years, so I am not the best person to notice that, and having read an ARC copy, I imagine that those issues might well have been sorted before publication. Other reviewers took issue with what they felt was the author’s agenda, the focus on religion, bigotry, and how it portrayed the townspeople. It made me think of how, over the years, and perhaps more in the horror genre than in others (although in science-fiction as well), the “others” (be monsters, outsiders, aliens...) have been seen as a stand-in or a representation of many of the issues high up in the political and social agenda of the time (gender, race, colonialism, religion, fear of the bomb, climate change, immigration policies, LGBT rights...), and have been analysed in detail. I am sure the novel will make readers think about some or many of those issues, but, ultimately, it is a novel, and if we are to judge by the ending (which I won’t reveal, of course), nobody comes out of the story as all good or bad, and that includes humans as well as vampyrs. And, for me at least, it closed on a satisfying (and slightly eerie) note.
I am not sure if there will be more novels set in this universe, but that is an option left open by the ending.
So, readers (and viewers) who have enjoyed recent vampire novels and series and others like Twin Peaks, The Wicker Man, and similar stories should try this one. And I recommend it as well to people who’ve read and enjoyed the author’s previous novels and short stories. They are unlikely to be disappointed.

C.J Tudor is one of my favourite horror writers out there, crafting intricate thrillers with a slight paranormal edge to them. In recent years her writing has become more overt with its supernatural themes, as evidenced by last year’s post-apocalyptic thriller The Drift and this year’s vampire horror, The Gathering, but she has lost none of her skill in crafting tightly-knitted mysteries that slowly unwind one thread at a time. Thanks to the likes of Twilight, vampire fiction has become slightly overplayed and the domain of teenage angst and YA fiction but with The Gathering, C.J Tudor firmly reclaims the genre for horror.

Set in remote Alaska, The Gathering takes place in a world where vampyrs are not the work fiction but have instead always existed alongside human history. More of a protected species than a mythological nightmare, vampyrs are often reclusive creatures that keep to their ‘colonies’ and avoid human interaction. Tudor’s depiction of her vampyrs bears an uncomfortable familiarity to the way that Native Americans and Indigenous Australians were treated in history; the book clearly uses the vampyr/human divide as a subtext on racism – although I must admit that I wouldn’t be quite so understanding if there were supernatural beings living on the outskirts of my town.

Billed by its publisher as “True Detective meets True Blood”, The Gathering certainly leans further into detective mystery more so than horror, although Tudor retains her knack for describing visceral violence with spine-tingling effectiveness. The novel is extremely atmospheric with the remote snow-covered town of Deadhart coming to life as an additional character in the novel. As with The Drift, Tudor captures that sense of unease and terror at being cut-off from civilisation and left isolated – particularly in the cold - evoking memories of the classic vampire comic series; 30 Days of Night.

Tudor crafts an extremely compelling mystery at the heart of her novel, layered with twists and turns throughout, although some of the plot threads didn’t come together as well as previous books – most notably the storyline involving the preacher, which felt superfluous to the actual plot and more of a red herring to divert attention from other suspects. I also felt that the ending was slightly rushed, given the slow build-up of tensions between the townspeople and the colony vampyrs. Once the identity of the murderer was revealed, in yet another pulse-pounding sequence from Tudor, it seemed that most of the loose ends are tied up between chapters and discussed in a goodbye conversation. Given the complexities of the politics in Deadhart, I am reluctant to believe everything would have resolved itself so simply and it would have been nice to see some POVs from some of the important supporting characters on both sides.

For the first time, Tudor appears to tease a sequel in her epilogue, and I would not be opposed to such a thing happening as the world-building and lore surrounding the vampyrs in this world are certainly strong foundations for a potential franchise. Barbara Atkins is a fascinating central character, much like Tudor’s other protagonists, and it feels like the book doesn’t really get enough time to dig deeper beneath the character’s skin – particularly her childhood trauma and relationship with her father.

Fans of Tudor’s writing who might be put-off by the emphasis on vampires in this novel should not worry as many of her storytelling devices from previous books are on display here; dual narratives, a lead protagonist with a mysterious and troubled past that keeps bubbling to the surface, shocking revelations about supporting characters that reframe their actions, and corrupt secrets within a community – often relating to some sort of class structure/conflict. She is the master at it, and despite the increased emphasis on ‘traditional horror’, the novel still feels like a C.J. Tudor book.

The Gathering, much like all of C.J. Tudor’s work, exposes the dirty underside of human (and in this case, vampyr) behaviour and how secrets refuse to stay buried forever. With the prevalence of vampires in horror fiction, it can be difficult to find something new to say about the centuries-old beast but C.J. Tudor manages to stake her claim (pun intended!) and find a unique perspective. As effective a commentary on small-town racism and prejudices as it is a supernatural detective thriller, The Gathering is yet another stunning entry to C.J. Tudor’s library of horror mystery. Here’s hoping for more stories set in this universe!