NIGHT HUNTER
by Michael Reaves
Reaves has extended his franchise from San Francisco (Street Magic, 1991, etc.) to Hollywood, but it's the same mixture as before: high-concept fantasy among urban lowlifes. Here, a teenaged hustler and an aspiring standup comic are staked through the heart by somebody the cops are calling, naturally, Van Helsing. What Homicide Sgt. Jake Hull and his partner Dan Stratton don't realize is that the perp is (sensation) a real vampire. (``Of course he's cool,'' Jake muses during the climactic chase. ``He's over 2000 years old.'') Can they follow the parsimonious trail of clues through the thicket of druggies and Satanists in time to save victim-designate Tace Daggett before she becomes the latest beneficiary of the Transylvanian kiss? An uneasy hybrid that does credit to neither genre.