Bloody Acquisitions (Fred, the Vampire Accountant, #3)

by Drew Hayes

[EBookObsessed]

My favorite boring vampire is back. I freakin’ LOVE Fred. I especially love Kirby Heyborne’s audiobook presentation, so much so that I waited an additional two months of the audiobook release before grabbing a copy of Blood Acquisitions.

Fred and the gang are back and the firm Frederick Fletcher Accounting is overwhelmed with work. One of the few Certified Public Paranormal Accountants around has Fred quite busy and trying to decide if it is time for him to hire some help. Word is spreading about Fred, and not just about his quality accounting work.

A new Clan of vampires has decided to move into town and they want to meet the vampire who has not only made alliances with the leader of the shifters, but has earned the respect of the King of the West. They just haven’t realized yet that these stories of the powerful vampire are actually exaggerated tales of one humble vampire accountant who still wears sweater vests and glasses.

Drew Hayes tells the adventures of Fred in a group of five short stories and each story builds off of the prior story and, in part, off of the prior two books in the series. Because of this writing style, it is hard to get into detail about Bloody Acquisitions without giving away too much, i.e. I can’t talk about story five without giving away things that happened in story four.

So the most I can tell you about Bloody Acquisitions is that as the new Clan of vampires move in, a lone vampire without a Clan for protection, such as our hero Fred, is now at risk. While Fred might be dating Crystal, an Agent for the paranormal unit, the Clan can use tricks to rid the city of Fred that are within the legal doctrine of treaties between the paranormals. In order words, they could come into town and find an excuse to kill this lone vampire in such a way that would be within their rights and Crystal and his other friends won’t be able to do anything about it. So a big part of our storylines will include whether Fred will leave his home, his friends, his business and everything he has built and make a run for it, or does he make a stand and hope for the best, that the Clan will simply leave the boring accountant to go about his business.

In Bloody Acquisitions, our favorite characters are back, including Crystal (Fred’s kick-ass agent girlfriend), Bubba (a pony shifter), Alfred (a zombie who wields the Sword of the Unlikely Champion), his friend Neal (a necromancer) and Amy (Neal’s alchemist mentor). There is also appearances by Ash (an agent whose power is still unknown) and Charlotte (the sentient, enchanted Inn and former fortress of mages). We also meet some new friends, some of which may or may not be important in future stories.

After I finished, I gave my friend Christine my iPod, since we are both fans of Drew Hayes and Kirby Heyborne, and then had a long, long discussion of open issues which we can only hope means that there will be more Fred adventures to come.

I just love the simplicity of Fred and the loyalty of these friends. I enjoy how the story telling and how the stories build upon each other and how it doesn’t have to be all sword fights and magic wielding to tell a good paranormal adventure. While this isn’t a romance series, we do have a love interest between Fred and Crystal to keep our inner romantic happy.

If you haven’t met Fred yet, I would highly recommend not only starting with The Utterly Uninteresting and Unadventurous Tales of Fred, the Vampire Accountant, but also grabbing yourself a set of the audiobooks narrated by Kirby Heyborne. He does such a wonderful job of bringing these characters to life, from the laid back, level headed Fred to the deep resonance of Gideon, the millennia old dragon.