Certain Dark Things

Certain Dark Things is a novel by the Mexican-Canadian writer Silvia Moreno-Garcia, published in 2016. It takes the vampire story out of its usual European settings and rebuilds it on Latin American ground, in a Mexico City that has made itself a refuge from the creatures surrounding it.

Domingo is a street kid in the capital, picking through rubbish to survive. He attaches himself to Atl, the last of a line of blood drinkers descended from the Aztec, who is hiding in the city from the de la Cruz family and from the police who want her gone. She lets him stay out of something between pity and loneliness, and the two of them form an alliance that nobody in the city would approve of.

Atl's pursuers arrive and start killing, which brings police officers, local crime bosses and the vampire community itself into the hunt. The novel weaves in the vampire nations the writer invents for the book, each with its own history and customs, and lets the city's own mythology and its long relationship with death shape the story of a girl who has run out of places to hide.