Stainless

Todd Grimson was the author of three novels and a collection of short fiction. His debut novel, Within Normal Limits, was the winner of the Oregon Book Award. His third, Brand New Cherry Flavor, was adapted into a Netflix limited series in 2021. He died in January 2025.

“Todd Grimson is the hippest writer in America today. Stainless [is] the first great vampire novel of the postmodern era.”—James Ellroy“The greatest horror writer you’ve never read . . . In Stainless, Todd Grimson set out to write ‘the Ultimate, Final Vampire Novel’—and succeeded . . . Grimson exposes the beating hearts of his characters, even the undead ones. Like its vampire characters, Stainless is a novel that grows stronger with age.”—Damien Walter, The Guardian“If Raymond Chandler or Flannery O’Connor had written a vampire novel, it might read with the brutal and passionate clarity of Stainless. Layers of corruption are explored and peeled away from the core of a heart-crushing love story. The ultimate late night in L.A.”—Katherine Dunn“Todd Grimson was a singular voice in American literary horror—a writer of hallucinatory brilliance and subterranean vision . . . Stainless, long out of print and newly resurrected by McNally Editions, is his overlooked masterpiece—a blood-soaked, brainy, and beautifully deranged vampire noir set in the underbelly of ’90s Los Angeles. Cool, sexy, cruel and tragically romantic, Stainless is one of the best vampire novels ever written.”—Nick Antosca“A vibrant, edgy love story that takes the conventions of vampire fiction and subtly transforms them until the existence of the undead seems not only plausible but profound . . . What sets Stainless apart [are] its character details, its moments of intimacy between human and vampire.”—David Ulin, Los Angeles Times“An erotic confetti-shower that leaves you thrilled and unclean.”—Kirkus Reviews“In some of the most beautiful prose ever to grace a horror novel, Grimson develops a convincing case against undeath . . . The vampire Justine longs for mortality—for the prospect of transformation, of stepping into the unknown. She finally achieves it in an astonishing ending that proves the truth of Wallace Stevens’s line: ‘Death is the mother of beauty.’”—Michael Clune, The Wall Street Journal “Mr. Grimson’s Gothic slacker novel can be read on several levels: as an indictment of contemporary American values, as a tragic love story, as a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of the music business, or as a remorseless vivisection of a certain social milieu that flourishes in the suburbs of Los Angeles. In other words, as a kind of satanic Less Than Zero.”—Joe Queenan, The New York Times Book Review“I haven’t been this obsessed with a book in a long time. Slinky sentences, unbeatable vibes, a bloody & beating heart of deep feeling at its core—Stainless has it all.”—Vanessa Martini, Green Apple Books (San Francisco, CA)“Passages of sublime lyricism . . . Grimson demonstrates considerable skill in Stainless, and certainly has produced an intriguing alternative to the usual suspects of the vampire set.”—Douglas E. Winter, The Washington Post“Stainless, reissued by the unerring McNally Editions, [is] not only a great late-90s LA novel (it stands alongside Less Than Zero in capturing That Time, imo) and a great vampire novel, but also a structurally fascinating read . . . Once you’re in, oh baby, you’re in. And if it culminates in bloodshed that might make even Patrick Bateman pause . . . Well, welcome back to the 90s, I suppose.”—Drew Broussard, Literary Hub, The 29 Best (Old) Books We Read in 2025