Daylight

Bad Phelan, a New Zealander on the Auckland bomb squad, likes to live dangerously. An expert caver and climber, he is on vacation on the Italian/French border in 2001 when he helps to bring a badly burned body out of a dangeous cove. The dead woman looks similar to a woman who rescued him years ago under mysterious circumstances in a flooded French cave before disappearing. Bad is compelled to investigate.

In following a series of increasingly eerie leads, Bad learns the story of Martine Valdisera, a WWII saint, whose body disappeared during the War; and meets Eve Moskelute, the young, beautiful widow of a celebrated French artist; Daniel Octave, a priest who verifies miracles; and, most surprisingly, Dawn Moskelute, Eve's identical twin sister, who seems to be a vampire.

Beautifully written, "Daylight" combines Elizabeth Knox's greatest gifts, her wildly imaginative storytelling and her clear eye for atmosphere and place. The vampires of "Daylight" are distinctly Knoxian, as intriguing and intelligently drawn as the angel in The Vintner's Luck; the steep hillside villages of the mountainous French coast and the dangerous but fascinating cave systems are equally vivid. Much of "Daylight" takes place in a world of caves and secret passages, of hidden cloisters and the rooms behind doors in the vaulted tunnels of medieval streets. It is in this "world beneath the world" that Bad Phelan finds himself face to face with history and myth, with phantoms whose hearts are still beating, and hungry, and able to break.