Are you as sick as I am of the recent tsunami of insipid teen vampire books? Nowadays there are far too many moonstruck girls from age 8 to 80 expecting a kind of unattainable romantic life only possible in Twilight. What happened to real thrills and fun and (heaven forbid) sophistication in vampire books? Bram Stoker must be rolling over in his grave.

Lucas Manson solves that problem. This horrifying and hilarious novel explodes the teen vampire genre and gives us a villain we can sink our teeth into. Minister Lucas Manson is many things: prophet, serial killer, slick evangelist, media tycoon, friends with the president of the United States, loving father, cheating husband – and a ruthless vampire. Did I mention he’s a fan of Ayn Rand? It seems that free-market minds think alike.

Manson has built up his religious cult, the Kingdom Seven Family Temple, and he wants one of two things from you, dear reader: your blood or your cash. Both are necessary to feed Manson’s growing army of devout followers. Naturally, the temple is shielded from government attacks because it is a bona fide religion. Sound familiar? The only things the Kingdom Seven Family Temple lacks are a couple of Hollywood stars who fly their own commercial jets. But the temple does have a luxurious ocean-going yacht, the “Spirit Wind,” which for Manson’s enemies is not a nice place to visit.

But Lucas Manson is more than a social satire. The hero, FBI agent Mark Dylan, is a sincere, decent man who wants to have kids with his wife and who is given the task of investigating the Temple. He assumes, like everyone else in America, that the “bad guys” (gangsters, terrorists, whoever) are easy to spot. In the battle of us versus them, we know who the enemy is—don’t we? At the end of the day, Mark Dylan realizes that in trying to figure out who should be hauled off to Guantanamo, things like ethnicity and religion are not only useless but are misleading. Lucas Manson encourages us to rethink how we evaluate good and evil. In the world of Lucas Manson, the most dangerous terrorist is living in a big mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut. If you ring the doorbell and Lucas Manson answers, you’d better be ready to fight for your life. And Edward Cullen will not be there to save you.

• Short Stack