The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires

I had never heard of this author, Grady Hendrix, but he has had some best sellers in the horror genre and the premise of this book, that a group of southern housewives take on an ancient vampire who is preying on the local children, was too tempting to pass up. A group of fairly well-to-do  housewives in 1990's Charleston, South Carolina, surreptitiously enjoy a book club focused on true crime, happily discussing how serial killers get away with their dark deeds. One wife tells her husband she is attending a Bible study group. When a crotchety neighbor dies in a rather ghoulish fashion, a man claiming to be a distant relative, James Harris, moves into the woman's house. Patricia Cunningham is bored with her life as wife to a successful psychiatrist, caretaker for his demented mother, and mother of two teenage children, and she wishes "something exciting would happen around here." She does the neighborly thing and takes a casserole over to the new neighbor, but gets worried when he does not answer the door. She goes into the house to find him dead--she thinks--and gives him mouth to mouth resuscitation (having been a nurse in her earlier years).  He "revives" and tells her he has a medical condition that makes him sensitive to daylight and that his wallet with his identification has been stolen. Patricia agrees to help with paying some overdue utility bills and setting up a checking account with some money he "found" under the house. That night, he comes to return the casserole dish and is invited in to meet Patricia's family. Anyone who has read vampire stories knows the significance of that move. By the time Patricia begins to suspect that he is not who he claims to be and is, in fact, something very dangerous, the damage is done. Children begin disappearing and/or dying in a poor neighboring Black community, and Patricia does some sleuthing of her own, discovering James in the back of a van feeding on one of the children. She tries to convince her fellow book group members that they need to take issues into their own hands, but the women are co-opted by their husbands who have become bosom buddies with James and think the women are all hysterical over-reactors. Patricia's husband actually puts her in a mental hospital for a time and when she comes out, she keeps her head down. Meanwhile James has ingratiated himself socially and financially with the community, getting the men to invest in a new real estate development. Patricia discovers one night that James has come into their home and is feeding off her older daughter and this galvanizes her to try once more to plot his demise. The most religious member of the book club  believes her but thinks she can handles James on her own, given her strong faith in God. She is sadly mistaken. The rest of the the book group eventually agree to help Patricia in a desperate attempt to protect their children from this greedy monster. The book is a bit grisly at times but uses the device of under-values and disaffected housewives to good measure in setting up the tension in the story.
Kirkus considers this to be Hendrix's "best book yet." And USA Today highlights "incisive social commentary and meaningful character development" as well as the female bonding that make these women ultimately a formidable opponent to incipient evil. They warn, however, that this is a "proper horror novel" and not for the faint of heart.
READ this interview on NPR with Hendrix to learn the backstory for this book. It's very personal and thoughtful and will add to your appreciation of what he's written.