They say vampires, thematically, are a recession indicator (Twilight was at the height of its powers just prior to the 2008 financial collapse). And if an economic downtown is what it takes to get queer, romantic, vampire cozies (quite a mouthful of a genre, but worth it) on bookshelves, then so be it. At least we’ll be having fun while watching the job market collapse.

Be Still My Unbeating Heart tries to do a lot, and that’s part of the pleasure. Formulaically, it’s a cozy whodunit, but it’s also a travel romance that features as its main characters a vampire who was turned in the 1970s (and who no doubt shares cultural references with his creator, author Josh Winning) and a talking cat á la “Sabrina the Teenage Witch.” Bastian (the vamp) and Whitby (his kitty companion) inhabit a world in which vampires are a known quantity. No longer shrouded in mystery, they’re just a supernatural, incredibly dangerous part of everyday life.

But Bastian isn’t actually dangerous. A threat to nobody, he drinks only farm-animal blood. Nonetheless, when the quaint Cinque Terre town of Vernazza, a region of Italy in which vampires are strictly forbidden from feeding (by international accord), starts sporting more dead bodies than its tiny morgue can handle, Bastian’s human-free diet is less relevant than his status as the only vacationing vampire — and, thus, likeliest suspect — in sight.

The first victim, Luna, a well-known and liked villager, is found on the beach with her throat ripped out. A vampire seems the likeliest culprit, but then Bastian and Whitby find an infinity symbol next to the body that’s linked to a local vampire-supporter group. The clue leads the pair to the cat café where the victim worked; it also turns out to be the vampire-supporters’ meeting place.

As Bastian and Whitby pursue the killer while under suspicion themselves — and while being chaperoned by Nico De Luca, a cop assigned by the anti-vamp police chief — the author deftly breadcrumbs a series of trails for the reader to follow while setting up the romance promised on the book’s cover (between Bastian and the handsome Nico, who has secrets of his own).

Could it be the town’s pro-vampire mayor orchestrating the murders? A jilted ex-lover of the first victim covering his tracks? A mysterious cabal of townspeople trying to drive tourists away? Or is Bastian really the killer everyone seems to think he is?

A romp of a story that doesn’t take itself too seriously and plays on all the right tropes (hello, one bed to share) without indulging in any vampirism-as-deus-ex-machina shortcuts, Be Still My Unbeating Heart had my blood pumping and my pulse racing until its conclusion. If I hadn’t already loved his earlier novel, Heads Will Roll, Winning would’ve won me over anew.

Nick Havey is a thriller and mystery writer and a lover of all fiction. His work has appeared in the Compulsive Reader, Lambda Literary, and a number of peer-reviewed journals.