ROVERS by Richard Lange – Review

I received this book for free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Rovers by Richard Lange
Published by Mulholland Books on July 27 2021
Genres: Adult, Crime, Horror
Pages: 304
Format: eARC
Source: Publisher
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The nitty-gritty: A unique take on vampires, Rovers is an outstanding blood-soaked, tragic tale of revenge and redemption. 

We walk out a ways and commence to digging. Six foot is Christian but we never go that deep. Ain’t no preacher looking. You got to bury your bodies or burn them. Make them disappear. That’s a rule for all rovers: cover your tracks. Otherwise folks’ll put two and two together and that’d be the death of us all.

Richard Lange is known as a literary fiction writer, and even though he’s veered into speculative territory with Rovers, there’s still a strong literary sensibility to the book, which is one reason I loved it so much. Fair warning, though: this is a dark, bleak and at times depressing story about a group of “rovers”—men and women who turn to dust in the sunlight and must consume human blood in order to survive. Yep, vampires! It wasn’t always an easy read, but Lange’s evocative prose, dusty desert setting, and surprisingly sympathetic characters make this a standout book.

The story takes place in the summer of 1976 and follows three different groups of characters. Jesse and Edgar are brothers, and because they are rovers and need human blood to survive, they travel the backroads of California and Nevada, never staying in one place for long. Edgar is mentally challenged and cannot survive without his younger brother Jesse, but he resents Jesse’s strict rules: hiding whenever they spot another rover, and only making a kill once a month. At one of their stops, they meet a bartender named Johona, a woman who bears a striking resemblance to Jesse’s old love Claudine, a rover who was dusted many years ago.

The second perspective is that of Charles, a man consumed with grief over his son’s murder—his throat was slashed and his body was drained of blood. The authorities were never able to find the perpetrator, so Charles left home and hit the road, determined to find the murderer on his own and bring justice to his son. One day Charles is approached by a man who claims that his wife was killed in the exact same way, and he offers Charles a chance for revenge. Charles’ chapters are a long letter he’s writing home to his wife about his adventures on the road (a nod to Dracula, perhaps?)

Finally, we follow a biker gang called the Fiends, rovers who have banded together to keep each other safe, but who have also gained a reputation among other rovers for being dangerous. In order to survive, they occasionally take on jobs from a rover named Beaumont—a sort of mob boss—earning enough cash to support their vagabond lifestyle. When the story opens, the Fiends have agreed to dust a rover who Beaumont has been after for years. In exchange, he agrees to give them the hefty sum of $ 25,000 plus a special perk: a live human baby, whose blood allows a rover to go an entire year without feeding.

When Jesse and Johona inadvertently interrupt the Fiends’ job, they find themselves running for their lives. As the Bicentennial—July 4th, 1976—approaches, these three groups will converge in Las Vegas for a violent and bloody showdown. 

Rovers is a complex revenge story with nuanced characters and an intriguing vampire mythology. Lange’s rovers are familiar in some ways but not in others. For example, they don’t have fangs, but use ice picks and stilettos to puncture their victim’s carotid artery in order to drink their blood. Just a touch of sunlight on their skin makes them blister, and only minutes exposed to the sun will result in their death. (It’s ironic that the story is set under the brutal summer sun of the American Southwest.) They only need to consume blood every thirty days or so, and things like guns, knives and falling from great heights won’t kill them—in order to dust a rover, you have to cut off its head (or trap it in the sunlight). Rovers can also identify each other by the black aura that surrounds them, an aura only other rovers can see. Otherwise, rovers are pretty much human: they eat and drink and fall in love, seek revenge on each other and mourn the loss of their friends. They prey on the weak and the drunk, people on the fringes of society who won’t be missed, and they’re careful about disposing of the bodies so they won’t call attention to themselves.

Even though there are speculative elements in the story, Rovers reads more like a gritty literary crime noir, so even if you’re the sort of reader who would never pick up a vampire book, this might work for you, especially if you like your stories on the dark side. And this is very dark. Lange’s vampires live in constant fear of being discovered, homeless and jobless and always on the move. Jesse steals in order to survive, and as long as he and Edgar have enough money for a motel room and some food, that’s all they really need. The violent scenes seem to come out of nowhere, which made them all the more shocking. In a standard vampire tale, you know you’re dealing with otherworldly creatures, so the killing isn’t as horrific. But when your characters appear mostly human, it makes the act of murder seem so much worse. 

But despite the violence, Lange manages to infuse his story with emotion and some surprisingly sympathetic characters. Take Edgar, for example. Edgar is fifty years old but has the mind of a child. He’s trapped in a body he doesn’t like—he didn’t choose to become a rover, that was forced upon him by his brother (and there are good reasons for it but I won’t go into them here). All of the characters broke my heart in one way or another, but I really felt for Edgar in particular, who doesn’t understand why he has to live with “the Little Devil,” what he calls the monster inside him. I also loved the Fiends and how carefully the author developed each of their characters. I adored Elijah and Antonia, the unofficial leaders of the Fiends, who are deeply in love with each other and are considering leaving the gang and their bloody lifestyle behind. Lange gives us some flashbacks that show how Jesse and Claudine met and fell in love, another heartbreaking tale that brought me to tears. Even Charles’ story moved me, although I found his plotline to be the most depressing and unsavory.

The setting and time period are perfect for this tale: the hot, sun-drenched small towns full of outcasts and desperate people, and the lawless feeling of the 1970s. Even the Las Vegas setting worked so well. Instead of the glitz of the strip and casinos, we see the seedy side of Vegas, where you just know some bad shit is going to go down. The final showdown was as bloody as you might expect, and the ending was an emotional punch that I didn’t see coming. Quentin Tarantino fans should definitely check this out, and if Rovers doesn’t get a movie option, I’ll be very surprised. Fans of complex storytelling and relatable characters—who don’t mind some bleakness in their stories—will love this book.

Big thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.