For those who have read Michelle Rowen's Immortality Bites series, Sarah and Thierry won't be new characters. For those introduced to them in BLOOD BATH AND BEYOND, the first in Rowen's Immortality Bites Mystery series, they're in for a treat. Sarah is a fledgling vampire with a fun- loving, trusting personality and totally familiar with pop culture, fashion and current slang. Her fiancé Thierry, on the other hand, is a master vampire with a dour personality who comes off as very dark and serious. It seems though that Sarah brings out the best in him.

When the book begins, most of Sarah's friends and family have moved away, and then Thierry tells her he has "an offer he can't refuse" to work for the Ring, the group of elders who govern vampire behavior. This job will require him to travel for the next 50 years. Fearing for her safety, he thinks it's best that she stay behind. She says she'd give up everything to go with him, and that's essentially that.

Their first assignment is in Vegas where humans have been brutally drained by vampires and left in public places. But they also must contend with a six-year-old child vampire who is competing in beauty pageants and bringing too much attention to herself. Then another vampire is murdered, and Thierry is a suspect. Put under house arrest, his only request is that Sarah be allowed to return to Canada.

Sarah though believes she can help Thierry solve the murder so she doesn't leave. To say that trouble follows her wherever she goes would be serious understatement.

I haven't read the first series with Sarah and Thierry, but BLOOD BATH & BEYOND and the following two stand on their own and are fun paranormal mysteries. Sarah and Thierry have a special relationship where each can see beyond the other's exterior, and they believe that together they can solve anything. While Rowen focuses a bit on the romance, there is enough mystery to keep me (who doesn't love contemporary romances) satisfied.