Title & Author: The Midnight Shift by Cheon Seon-ran, translated by Gene Png

Diversity and Representation: OwnVoices, translated fiction (South Korean author), LGBT+ (sapphic)

Genre: crime thriller, detective fiction, paranormal fantasy/vampire, queer fiction

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐.5

Notable Quote: "It's easier to blame the things you don't want to accept on monsters."

Read this if you enjoyed: Gutter Mage by J.S. Kelley

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First line: "'A vampire did it.' The only way to make sense of this woman's bullshit was to go back in time."

Summary (spoiler free): In this Korean best-seller, detective Su-Yeon investigates a string of apparent suicides at a crumbling hospital full of forgotten elderly residents. What seems like a cut-and-dry case of pervasive depression takes a supernatural turn when Su-Yeon meets Violette, a mysterious French-Korean woman who insists that the deaths were caused by a vampire. A vampire who must have help on the inside. Su-Yeon, invested in keeping her dearest friend who also lives in a ward at the hospital safe, is plunged into a supernatural world full of old grudges, lost love, and loneliness.

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This book received 3.5/5 stars from me on my first read (closer to a 4 than a 3). There are some genuinely brilliant aspects to this story, particularly in its themes and use of masterful parallel story telling with the three POV characters, and it really hits its stride as a story in act two. However, the first and third acts leave more to be desired in terms of pacing, and the masterful theming can sometimes be bogged down in cliches/tropes of the supernatural crime fiction genre. The Midnight Shift is at its best when it deviates, subverts, or digs deeper into these tropes as opposed to invoking them at face value.

I love the themes of this book. It is, first and foremost, about loneliness and social isolation. Each of our POV characters-- detective Su-yeon, nurse Nanju, and vampire hunter Violette-- struggle with physical and emotional isolation from the people around them. This isolation is baked into the very mythology of the story, with vampires instinctively seeking out "lonely blood."

This metaphor makes Cheon's vampires a perfect means of exploring the societal conditions that lead to so many people in South Korea feeling isolated, as well as what the impact of that isolation has been and still is. From financial exploitation, addiction, misogyny, unaddressed familial or romantic grief, marginalized queerness, and lack of support for mental health and aging populations, the country has plenty of loneliness to go around.

One of the best and most effective metaphors is Su-Yeon's partner's insistence that the deaths at the hospital don't require further investigation, even with obvious red flags and discrepancies. The residents who died were lonely, after all, at that loneliness begets more isolation even in death, a mark of shame that excused their deaths as "unavoidable." On a greater scale, this entire story falls in line with the notable quote above: the characters here, unlike the reader, have the ability to blame at least some of the hurt and isolation in their lives on a real monster. But they can't ignore what attracted that monster to them in the first place.

This, and a wonderful bit of detail about a German vampire having an affinity for Korea because both countries had been separated and split in two are two of my favorite examples of the themes coming to fruition.

While it oftentimes falls into fairly standard noir and supernatural mystery tropes that earn a few eye-rolls, this is a largely fast-paced and engaging read that elevates itself over other similar works thanks to its sharp eye for social commentary.

Dark and suspenseful and fascinating. I found it to be a sobering reminder that even across the globe, societal problems tend to share very specific similarities. Excited to be recommending this one during pride month!

This is a hard one to rate for me. I enjoyed the story itself, and I liked the structure of having three different POVs. What didn’t hit for me was the writing, and since this is a translation, I can’t say if my issue was with the original text or if it just didn’t translate well. A lot of the prose and dialogue read as clunky and awkward, and the imagery was uninspired. I can’t speak to how it comes across in the original Korean, but what I guess was supposed to evoke loneliness and bleakness unfortunately just came across as lifeless.