Cult '80s horror novel bursting with sleaze, gore & pornography. No wonder I loved it when I was 19! It's still pretty cool today. Set in once-squalid, now long-gone Times Square, LIVE GIRLS features a strip club filled with vampires both grotesque and alluring. Sure, it's corny, not all that well-written, but earnest and quick-moving, original and inventive. I suppose "glory hole" is something you'd never hear in either DRACULA or TWILIGHT. Oh well. Would've made a helluva an '80s horror movie....

Sleazy, but satisfying, retrograde and inappropriate, but entertaining, dirty old New York City squalor.

What I learned from this book is that garlic is my best bet when encountering vampires, not crosses or bibles or holy water or even stakes. Garlic should do the trick! But seriously, this is my second book by Ray Garton and I enjoyed it so much that I finished it fairly quickly. What I really enjoyed about "Live Girls" is something that I'm hoping appears in all his work, which is the dark, truly horrifying portrayal of any monster that he deals with. This book is about vampires that are beasts,...

Garton really serves up a winner here! Not really my intention, but vampires have featured in several books I have read lately (The Lesser Dead, Blindsight). Definitely an old and tired trope today, with scads of 'lovable' vampires featuring in paranormal romance and urban fantasy, but Garton's LG is something of a classic in the genre and his vampires are not lovable at all. First published in 1987, LG features Davey Owen as the main protagonist; a 'nice guy' who makes horrible choices with wom...

Absolute, top-quality, best I've read in decades vampire story!Live Girls is a LOT of fun and paced very quickly. Though the plot moves along quickly, we get time to know our characters and grow to care for or abhor them, and they are very well fleshed out. Davey Owen has a really bad day, and wanders into peep show joint on Times Square called 'Live Girls'. It isn't perversion or lust drawing him in, but genuine curiosity. But his curiosity brings him more trouble than he knows what to do with....

1987 Times Square before Rudy Giuliani cleaned up all the sleazy vampire strip joints. Other than Dracula and Salem's Lot, this may be the best vampire novel I've read. Compulsive reading at its best.

3 AND 1/2 STARS While not as impressed as some of the other readers, this 1987 outing by veteran Ray Garton is certainly one of the better modern vampire tales. It has all the mystery, gore, violence, and sex that one expect from a book like this, but certain scenes felt awkward and the dialogue a bit melodramatic at times. Although I saw many plot points coming way ahead, I still had a lot of fun with this book. Definitely better than Garton's THE LOVELIEST DEAD, but not the classic I was hopin...

I hope I don't offend anyone with this review, but here it goes. Let me start by saying, I loved this book, and I am going to read the sequel for sure. Now to get down to the nitty gritty: This is my version of a trashy sleazy beachy speed read book. I could have read this in one gulp while laying out in the sun, or perhaps on an airplane. Instead I powered through it in 2 nights, last night being wide awake at 2am blatantly refusing to put it down. Its a story! Plain and simple and down to the

Happy 55th birthday, Salma Hayek (Salma del Carmen Hayek Jiménez-Pinault) !!! Neon city lights of New York City’s Times Square can be very seductive at times, the promises of dark pleasures on the seedier side streets to, so when Davey Owen falls to the lure of a glowing sign advertising “Live Girls”, he's going to find there much more than the little entertainment he was looking for... Vernon Macy stepped forward. The sounds of traffic and voices and music, the pulse of the whole city seemed

First experience with Garton and what a pleasant one. This book was great, exactly the kind of visceral, bloody, violent, crazy ride that vampire fiction should be but keeps forgetting to be or getting confused and watered down by sparkly vampires. Alternatively, this was a clever metaphor for how dangerous random sex was in the 1980s in NY. Either way a great read. Highly recommended.

Excellent vampire story!LIVE GIRLS is the most fun I've had reading a book in a while.Ray Garton knows how to write. There isn't a wasted word here. I loved it.Fast paced, drenched in gore, sex, and all around craziness. Just the way a good vampire novel should be.

Ray Garton delivered again! I had heard great things about this book and was not disappointed. I really enjoyed this dark, erotic vampire tale and look forward to reading the sequel as soon as I can get my hands on a copy. What fate awaits Davey and Casey, I wonder?

curvily sexy and teethily hot

DNF @ 45%.You can see the plot coming a mile away, someones going to turn into a vampire! Basically, Davey gets a blow job and gets bit during the process. Then he goes back to the vampire eventually being persuaded to bite the vampire during sex. I couldn't finish this, it was SO boring and slow. Everyone in this book is very stupid and unobservant to these sex worker vampires. What made me drop this book was Davey's turning process into a vampire is taking him way to long to do it.

Surprises happen all the time - getting that lady in the drive-thru that is refreshingly pleasant and doesn't bitch about how shitty of a job she has, finding a $20 bill in your pants pocket that you didn't know you had, randomly finding that gem of a horror movie that you've never heard of before on Netflix by nothing more than sheer accident - you get the idea. LIVE GIRLS was my pleasant surprise. I'd probably had it sitting patiently on my TBR pile 4-5 years after I had bought it. Finally, it...

Grim, sleazy, scary: a vampire novel in ‘80s NYC, Live Girls is better than it has any right to be. After not enjoying The Light at the End I was hesitant to read any other New York-set horror novels published in the splatterpunk era, but Ray Garton’s solid grip on the language makes this one work. His short story “Sinema” was one of my favorites in Silver Scream, so maybe I should check out more of this guy’s work. I knocked a star off for the rushed ending. It’s not a bad ending . . . just rus...

People are found dead but their blood is missing. Corpses disappear from mortuaries. Ordinary, decent men keep returning to a certain seedy sex peep-show called Live Girls. The police know nothing and do even less.When Walter Benedek, a respectable, middle-aged reporter working for the New York Times, finds his sister and niece dead his world falls apart. He decides to spend the rest of his holiday looking for their potential murderer – his brother-in-law, Vernon Macy. Vernon was last seen near

I was exited to start a perpetual challenge I had in mind for quite a while: Read through the Bram Stoker Award short-list and winners! (I want to do the same with the Man Booker Prize, though that's even more insane). Too bad I kind of started on the wrong foot. I got this book because it was short-listed for Best Novel so I assumed it must be just as great as the winner novel Misery by Stephen King (which tied with Swan Song by Robert R. McCammon which I haven't read yet). Unfortunately, it wa...

Enjoyed this vampiric tale! I think it's one of the only times that the vampires actually attack and feed in bat form, just a little thought. Interesting slant on the vampire lore with some nice sexy parts haha mixed with good old fashioned horror. Good fun!

Another winner found for less than a dollar at a thrift store! This book got progressively better as it lead up to the fucking awesome last scene. a few points: - Vampire strippers??? Sign me the fuck up. - I wasn't thrilled with this book until just after the halfway mark. Then I was hooked.- A grown ass man named Davey, really? And his girlfriend is named Casey? If I were his editor, those names would be the first thing to go.- Love Garton's take on vampires and the process of turning into one...