I picked up Bloodcircle, the third book in P.N. Elrod’s Vampire Files, one night when I was waiting for the dregs of a horrible headache to pass so I could sleep. It’s short, it moves quickly, and Jack gets beat up routinely, so he feels worse than I did. In this book, Jack continues his search for the woman who made him a vampire, and we meet Jonathan Barrett, another vampire who has his own series. I have no interest in reading historical novels with Barrett, but I was interested enough in what happens to him in this time frame to pick up the next book the day after, Art in the Blood. However, Barrett doesn’t actually appear in this one; we seemed to have moved off of the beginning arc in the series (Jack is turned into a vampire and deals with it) into, possibly, one-shot mysteries. The plot of this one is basically unrelated to the prior books (though the emotional resonances from prior books remain), and a fairly standard, perfectly serviceable murder mystery it is. I have no great urge to read the next one, but I will someday.