Kim
Newman
In London,
1888, two monsters are at large, capturing the imagination of the public. One
is Count Dracula, who, after his defeat of Professor Abraham Van Helsing’s band
of heroes, is married to Queen Victoria and spreads his vampirism throughout
London. The other is a vampire killer in Whitechapel called Silver Knife, after
the silver scalpel that he employs on vampire prostitutes. Charles Beauregard
of the Diogenes Club finds himself on the case of the Whitechapel murderer (who
is, of course, Jack the Ripper), a case that thrusts him deeper and deeper into
worlds of darkness and forces him to team up with an unlikely partner, vampire
Geneviève Dieudonné.
Kim
Newman’s Anno Dracula is filled with
political intrigue, action, and an abundance of historical and literary
characters. Although the story is fast-paced, with an exciting and sometimes
gory plot line, part of the fun of the novel is cataloguing the who’s who of
vampires and discovering the fates of Stoker’s original characters.
Kim Newman’s
novel and the series that followed it capture the power and resilience of Dracula’s
hold on our imaginations since it was first published in 1897. His depiction of
Dracula as an omnipotent monarch who controls British society feeds on the
cultural fascination attached to Stoker’s Dracula and suggests why the vampire
will never truly die.
Readers
should be advised that some knowledge of Stoker’s novel is useful. However,
Newman’s new cast of characters is well-rounded and generates an entertaining
mystery about which literary or historical figure claims the title of Jack the
Ripper.
- Kat
Bellamy
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