Blood Books
The Blood series by Tanya Huff is a set of five books (and plenty of short stories) that was eventually adapted into the television show Blood Ties. It takes place in Toronto, except for the last book being in Vancouver. The heroine is Defective Detective Vicki Nelson, whose retinitis pigmentosa forced her to quit being a cop and become an Occult Detective. Her off-and-on Cop Boyfriend/ex-partner Mike Celluci is not terribly thrilled with her choice of lifestyle. Then Vicki ends up meeting Friendly Neighborhood Vampire Henry Fitzroy and partners with/dates/donates blood to him on a regular basis. The fourth main character is Tony Foster, a homeless kid that Vicki recruits to help give Henry blood, and ends up involved with Henry as well.
The books in the series are:
- Blood Price
- Blood Trail
- Blood Lines
- Blood Pact
- Blood Debt
- Blood Bank, a collection of stories featuring the main characters. There are a few flashback stories involving Henry, but most take place after the final book in the series.
The Blood series has a followup trilogy, Smoke and Shadows, following Tony and Henry's lives in Vancouver.
Tropes used in Blood Books include:
- A Christmas Carol: This happens to Vicki in one of the short stories. She doesn't like it much.
- Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Henry VIII's Illegitimate Son Was A Vampire
- Bi the Way: Henry
- Buried Alive: Henry
- Demonic Possession
- Dude in Distress
- Everything's Deader with Zombies: Blood Pact
- For Halloween I Am Going as Myself: Henry, of course
- For Science!: the motivation behind Blood Pact
- Heroic Bastard: Henry
- The House of Tudor: Henry Fitzroy is originally Henry, Duke of Richmond and Somerset, Henry VIII's bastard son.
- Interspecies Romance: Henry and the humans he dates.
- Lover and Beloved: Tony and Henry's relationship has elements of this.
- Magic Pants
- Mummy: Blood Lines
- Nothing Is the Same Anymore: Blood Pact has a whopper of an ending: Vicki receives a death wound, and Mike talks Henry into giving her an Emergency Transformation. Henry does this knowing that it will be the end of his relationship with Vicki. He and Tony then take her off to Vancouver to spend a year learning how to be a vampire, while Mike becomes The Alcoholic. At the end of the book, Vicki returns to Mike all new and different. The fifth book in the series deals with Vicki's relationship to Henry changing now that they are both vampires and in the same territory. Henry is convinced that instinct trumps friendship, Vicki isn't. They end up having to learn to deal with each other in a new way.
- Organ Theft: Blood Debt
- Our Demons Are Different: Blood Price
- Our Ghosts Are Different: Blood Debt
- Our Vampires Are Different: the usual garlic/cross stuff doesn't affect Catholic Henry. Also, Henry thinks that vampires can't really hang around other vampires without having territorial issues, although Vicki seems to prove it's not as absolute a rule as he thought.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: Blood Trail
- Our Zombies Are Different
- Polyamory: Vicki dates both Mike and Henry with their knowledge (if not exactly ungrudging support, since the two men don't get along very well) until circumstances/moving adjust the situation. Henry dates both Vicki and Tony, with a lot less angst between the parties involved there.
- Protectorate: Henry's attitude towards whatever city he's living in. But then again, he got brought up with noblesse oblige.
- Really Seven Hundred Years Old: Henry, natch. Lampshaded when a jealous Mike, not yet in on the secret, snarks about how much younger than Vicki he is, and can't understand why she's laughing so hard.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Mike and Henry's relationship in a nutshell.
- Rich Idiot With No Day Job: Henry actually has a night job that he makes money from (see below), but he seems to have saved up well over the years. Plus, well, the crime-fighting with Vicki.
- Romance Novel: Henry writes them under the Pen Name "Elizabeth Fitzroy." Mike makes fun of him for this constantly.
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Mike: Why Elizabeth Fitzroy? |
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- Stealth Pun: Blood Trail is about a pack of werewolves living near London, Ontario...without a single mention of the Warren Zevon song "Werewolves of London."
- Temporary Blindness: Vicki's eye condition makes her night blind.
- They Fight Crime: In multiple pair-ups.
- Undead Tax Exemption: Henry, to a degree. He pays taxes and has all the ID the average civilian would think to look for - but to a police officer doing a thorough examination (Mike, in a fit of very poorly concealed jealousy that's pointed out by...everyone, really) there are enough holes to "drive a Mack truck through". Mike suspects Henry of being in the Mafia, as a result. He's very surprised, when he confronts Vicki with this and she laughs at him when he says it.
- Van Helsing Hate Crimes: Blood Trail
- Weirdness Magnet: Henry, since he's a vampire, gets this.