Review by Booklist Review
Suyeon is a police officer summoned to investigate another death at Cheolma Rehabilitation Hospital. The victim jumped out a window, citing a desire to see the "hill of flowers," just like the others who died. Suyeon has a personal connection to the hospital--she visits an elderly woman who's like a grandmother to her, and she can see how painfully obvious it is that many patients are lonely and left to rot. As Suyeon struggles with her partner to determine the common thread among the suicides (aside from the hospital itself), she meets Violette, a vampire hunter who offers a supernatural explanation for the ever-increasing deaths. Violette has a troubled past of her own and is very familiar with how vampires hide among humans, and she forms an unlikely alliance with Suyeon, despite Suyeon's skepticism. Working together, they race to prevent more "suicides." The Midnight Shift is a fast-moving mystery with just enough glimpses into each character's past to make them feel complete without exposition dumping, and it concludes by neatly tying up each loose end.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Seon-ran (A Thousand Blues) crafts an intricate vampire mystery set in contemporary Korea that explores profound themes of loneliness, queer desire, and moral ambiguity. Detective Suyeon finds herself disturbingly alone in investigating a series of apparent suicides at a dilapidated rehabilitation hospital in Incheon. Her suspicions of foul play grow when she repeatedly runs into the enigmatic Violette at the crime scene. A Korean adoptee raised in France and now attempting to reclaim her heritage, Violette purports to be hunting the vampire that, she insists, murdered the elderly victims. Meanwhile, Nanju, a nurse struggling with debt, becomes dangerously entangled with the very monster Suyeon seeks. As bodies drained of blood continue to pile up, Suyeon and Violette must uncover the truth while confronting their own hidden traumas and desires. Cheon skillfully toggles between her three heroines, building impressive emotional depth through their interwoven narration. The darkly romantic flashbacks to 1980s France--highlighting Violette's formative experiences with Lily, a charismatic vampire--are particularly mesmerizing, echoing classic gothic tales with a fresh, queer twist. Though the worldbuilding occasionally feels inconsistent, Cheon's nuanced exploration of loneliness and isolation resonates. K-drama fans, especially those drawn to moody supernatural thrillers and complex, character-driven plots, will eagerly devour this genre-blurring tale. (Aug.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Foul play of a supernatural sort may be responsible for a string of deaths ascribed to suicide at a long-term-care hospital. In this horror-mystery hybrid, a bestseller in South Korea, a detective named Suyeon arrives on the scene after a 74-year-old man has apparently jumped to his death from the sixth floor of Cheolma Rehabilitation Hospital--the fourth death by suicide at the facility within one month. Suyeon's superior is inclined to believe that the notes the jumpers left behind are authentic, that the suicides were copycats and reflect the bleak environment of a long-term-care facility. But Suyeon has her doubts. For one reason, there's been a curious absence of blood at the death scenes. And why has every jump been from the sixth floor? Also having her doubts is a woman Suyeon meets when she returns to the scene: "They were thrown," the stranger says. "Picked up after they were already dead, or as good as dead, and hurled. Hard." The woman is cagey but tells Suyeon her name--Violette--and that "I put away bad guys too." And she's going to need Suyeon's help. Chapters from the point of view of the colorless Suyeon, "a believer of cold, hard facts," switch off with other perspectives, including that of an adolescent Violette as she is introduced to the vampire world; these overheated passages, set in the 1980s, can read like juvenilia. The rigorous logic characterizing the mystery novel is pointedly and playfully at odds with the irrationality of supernatural fiction, and the payoff potential heavily favors horror fans. Although there's a deftly pulled-through thread about loneliness and some interesting philosophical riffing about a vampire's justifications for murder, everything is harbored in a story in which events proceed pretty much as expected. Miss of the vampire. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
