By Seth Grahame-Smith

...so I wasn't sure about 'Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter' but, once I got started, it soon became very apparent that what we have here is a smart, funny and very clever take on the life of the 16th President.

Taking the tone of a historical biography it begins, naturally, at the beginning with Honest Abe's childhood, his obvious intellect largely ignored by his work-shy father but fuelled in small ways by his doting mother until, following a strange encounter with one of his father's debtors, his mother dies of what's called 'milk sickness' which his father does little or nothing to prevent. Eventually Abe discovers the real reason she died was in forfeit to the vampire his father owed money to and this sets the young Lincoln on a path of revenge that will change his life forever.

Now I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on the life on Abraham Lincoln but I know enough to recognise some of the more famous events in his life - in particular the speeches he made - and it's in this that the books excels. Grahame-Smith cleverly weaves real events and vampire hunting into the narrative in such a way that it's hard at times to figure out what drives what. The conceit of the book is that, had it not been for the vampires, and one in particular who becomes a kind of mentor, Lincoln would never had become president. It goes deeper though, once we learn that he fought the civil war for the abolition of slavery on behalf of the human-friendly Union Vampires who were his allies, against the Southern Vampires who had established the slave trade as a way of farming human fodder anything goes.

Throughout each of the three parts - Boy, Vampire Hunter, President - every tiny facet of the mans life is twisted to fit the vampire 'facts' of his life, the long coat in which he could hide his trusty axe, the long beard that was grown to cover his hunting scars, the deaths of his sons, the slow descent into madness of his wife, it all turns on these fantastical events and, as the book progresses through each section, it becomes progressively darker and more bloodthirsty, never shying away from the deaths of innocents but also, strangely, not glorifying them either which lends an air of credibility to the writing as a historical account.

I did feel that after the civil war it skipped ahead a bit too fast and when the assassination at the hands of John Wilkes Booth comes it feels rushed, like we're hurtling towards the finish line. But don't let that put you off, the final chapter is as surprising as it is inevitable and worth the price of admission alone.

All-in-all I've got to say it's a fabulous read, exciting, entertaining and at times truly gripping in that oh-so-rare unputdownable way that you always want a book to be and more than that, it's opened my eyes to an entire genre that I shall pay more attention to in future - I can only hope they're all this good.

Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunteris published by Corsair where you can see a wonderful trailer for the book and is available from Play.com, Blackwell and all good book stores.

Seth Grahame-Smith tweets, as you might expect.