Vampire Sunrise is the third installment in author Carole Nelson Douglas’s Delilah Street series. Her fantastic cast of characters, including Delilah Street, Ric Montoya, bloodthirsty werewolves and vampires, and the very bizarre supernatural, are back in action for book three. With Douglas’ penchant for past eras, it’s not surprising that she’s found a way to bring her passions to a futuristic, urban fantasy setting unlike any the fictional world has seen before.

Delilah Street is a paranormal investigator in the heart of a sin city — in not-too-distant a future from now — much changed from the Las Vegas most today know and love, nearly bursting with supernatural entities. Delilah’s business is never slow; however, her real purpose in the city is to find her famous yet seemingly nonexistent, doppelganger. Much to her dismay, Delilah’s focus unexpectedly turns as the love of her life, Ric Montoya, lies near death in a coma - and under the extremely hospitable care of one Las Vegas’s most powerful vampires.

The whole situation is as close to a living nightmare as Delilah has experienced for a long time, and there is still more she needs to start applying her P.I. skills to. Some new — or maybe not so new — vampires now run one of the strips most prestigious hotels. Along with it, there have been too many unexplained disappearances, strange happenings, and now the attack on Ric. With the other “Big Shots” feeling territorial and temperamental about the goings-on in Sin City, Delilah is nearly certain this new Vampire duo is responsible for all the upheaval. The huge, possibly life-threatening task before her is to find the facts supporting her theory.

Certain of Delilah's skills make her something more than the average human and a formidable foe against the supernatural. She also has a good heart and some interesting allies, all proving useful many times over as her quest leads her into the bowels of a world from which few return alive. The looming question is how long those allies will remain a positive force for her, as turning sides is something they are known to do. A waning list of allies is not good when she is facing the greatest threat of her career - and life - to date.

Ric, for all his humanity, is also more special than the average human. His abilities may be semi-responsible for his coma, but they may also help defeat a terrible enemy. Together, Delilah and Ric make an unstoppable team, but this war is against a pair of living monsters who have proven themselves unbeatable for thousands of years. The fight between the living and the dead may prove costly one indeed.

In her Irene Adler series, Carole Nelson Douglas really flourished with the gothic noir style — something few modern writers seem to really understand how to work. That series was by far and away a modern favorite for historical crime and horror genres, driving anticipation high for this latest urban fantasy/crime genre series. Surprisingly, those expectations are not quite met in Vampire Sunrise (Delilah Street; Paranormal Investigator).

Douglas’s writing and flavor is far more sophisticated than the average author who writes for this genre, and therefore, her vocabulary, historical character references, and even the protagonist’s obsession with an era-specific style are harder to appreciate. Beyond those, her verbose descriptive paragraphs — while truly adding much to the story for those who understand them — walk a fine line between delivering a comprehensible read for the masses and something few readers would appreciate. Regardless of the complexities of the novel, compared to other works within this genre, Vampire Sunrise (Delilah Street; Paranormal Investigator) is refreshingly creative and possessing a good storyline. If she absorbs more of the genre’s style, Douglas will be topping charts with this new series in no time.