The vampire novel we deserve right now

Think things are tough now on the national scene? Wait till the vampires arrive, agitating for equal rights, medical treatment, nighttime access to schools and representation in Congress. That’s the scenario spun by Raymond A. Villareal in his relentlessly clever first novel, “A People’s History of the Vampire Uprising.”

A fictional oral history — compiled from newspaper articles, notes from a Centers for Disease Control specialist and more — “A People’s History” traces a viral outbreak from its onset in Nogales, Ariz. Lauren Scott, a young CDC research physician, is dispatched to the border town to examine a three-day-old corpse “exhibiting unusual hemophilia bruising and intradermal contusions over ninety percent of the body.”

Scott and her likable sidekick, Hector Gomez, head of the Nogales health department, search for Patient Zero: a woman named Liza Soles, the corpse who, it turns out, has been reanimated by her exposure to the Nogales Organic Blood Illness (NOBI) virus. They catch up with her in the art mecca of Marfa, Tex., looking like “a young Patti Smith busking in front of the Chelsea Hotel.”

Liza escapes, but not before Scott gets a blood sample, which allows her to determine that the virus causes an allergic reaction to sunlight and can be spread only by direct contact. Those who survive develop “solipsism syndrome,” a severe form of narcissistic personality disorder. Because of their aversion to daylight, survivors call themselves Gloamings.

It soon becomes clear that NOBI carriers are choosing whom they bite based on the trifecta of beauty, wealth and talent. Taylor Swift is the first celebrity to sign on, followed by various politicians, crime lords and the pope.

Within a short time, this select group has become the new 1 percent: They form the Equal People movement and petition Congress to be protected under the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA). Less than 18 months after Liza’s disappearance, the president signs the Gloaming Rights Act.

Villareal’s cheeky blend of political satire and gothic thriller is enhanced by his background as an attorney and his deft use of convincing details: the science behind the NOBI virus; the Gloamings’ legal defense in their efforts to be recognized under the ADA; minutes from congressional hearings; copious footnotes; and three brief appendixes.

With its doggedly unglamorous investigators pitted against a cabal of narcissistic, wealthobsessed bloodsuckers, this wild ride of a novel proves that each era gets the vampires it deserves.