Black Static Horror Magazine #1

by TTA Press Authors

Charlaine Harris—Sookie Stackhouse Vampire Mysteries x Nancy A. Collins—Sonja Blue books x Jeanne Kalogridis—Diaries of the Family Dracul x Mary Ann Mitchell—Marquis de Sade Vampire series x Karen E. Taylor—the Vampire Legacy x Tanya Huff—Blood series x Susan Sizemore—Laws of the Blood series x Sherrilyn Kenyon—Dark Hunter series x P. N. Elrod—the Vampire Files x Elaine Bergstrom—Austra Family books

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  SECRET HISTORY

  Historical characters who have been ‘vampirised':

  The Marquis de Sade in a series of novels by Mary Ann Mitchell beginning with Sips of Blood x Vlad Tepes in Dracula by Bram Stoker x The Count Saint-Germain in a series of novels by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro x Lord Byron in Tom Holland's The Vampyre x Attila the Hun in Empire of Fear by Brian Stableford x Just about everybody else in a series of books by Kim Newman beginning with Anno Dracula

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  SIGNIFICANT TITLES

  Thirteen tombstones on the vampire highway:

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe—The Bride of Corinth (1797) x John Polidori—The Vampyre: A Tale (1819) x J. Sheridan Le Fanu—Carmilla (1872) x Bram Stoker—Dracula (1897) x Richard Matheson—I Am Legend (1954) x Theodore Sturgeon—Some of Your Blood (1961) x Anne Rice—Interview with the Vampire (1976) x Suzy McKee Charnas—The Vampire Tapestry (1980) x Whitley Strieber—The Hunger (1981) x George R.R. Martin—Fevre Dream (1982) x Lucius Shepard—The Golden (1993) x Poppy Z. Brite—Lost Souls (1993) x Andrew Fox—Fat White Vampire Blues (2003)

  OUTSIDERS

  Some writers you wouldn't normally associate with vampires:

  Nikolai Gogol—Viy x Alexander Dumas—The Pale-Faced Lady x Sir Arthur Conan Doyle—The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire x Colin Wilson—The Space Vampires x Philip Jose Farmer—The Image of the Beast x Simon Raven—Doctors Wear Scarlet x Federico Andahazi—The Merciful Women

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  BOOKS WITH BITE

  Fashions change, movements come and go, but our fascination with the vampire remains a constant, and at times this monster's popularity has threatened to eclipse the genre of which it is such a significant part. Both Polidori's The Vampyre and ubertext Count Dracula triggered an almost obsessive concern with bloodsuckers in the general population, or at least that part of it interested in the literature of the fantastic, and there is strong evidence that we're in just such a period at the moment. In his 1998 overview of the year in Horror, Stephen Jones recorded that more than 15% of books published in the genre featured vampires and nine years on there's no sign that the bubble has burst, with the shelves in bookstores groaning under a plethora of spin offs from the Buffyverse and Anne Rice wannabes, complete with Gothic trim, while the critical success of Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian has conferred the cachet of literary respectability on the subgenre.

  Here at Case Notes we get to see more than our fair share of books with bite, and so a round-up of some recent titles seems in order.

  In the aptly titled Blood Red (Berkley paperback, 416pp, $7.99 * Earthling Publications hardback, 331pp, $40) James A. Moore creates the affluent coastal community of Black Stone Bay and then turns it into the personal playground of master vampire Jason Soulis. People disappear at an alarming rate, victims of Soulis, who is assembling his own private army of the undead. Most newly made vampires are not very bright, and by keeping them safe for a few days Soulis hopes to increase his progeny's chance of survival. He is also engaged in an experiment to create another master vampire like himself.

  The story is told through the eyes of a motley crew of well realised characters, none of whom have the full picture. There's drop dead gorgeous student Maggie who supplements her college grant by working as a high class call girl and becomes a vital element in Soulis's plan. Fellow student Ben, a skilled computer hacker, is fixated on Maggie and will do anything to protect her, while another student, Kelli Entwhistle, becomes involved when two young boys whom she baby sits disappear. Boyd and Holdstedter, the detectives investigating the disappearances, infuse the narrative with a Tarantinoesque touch of black humour. Nor does Moore let human beings off the hook as regards moral culpability, providing two compelling bad guys in the form of pimp Tom and a crooked cop who preys on vulnerable college girls.

  On the night of Halloween, Soulis unleashes his vampire horde on the town and all the chickens (bats?) come home to roost.

  Bottom line, this is pretty much a textbook example of small town America in peril, the kind of thing Stephen King does so well, with echoes of 'Salem's Lot in the text and, although it's never stated, I got the distinct impression that the book is part of an ongoing series, with hints of events that took place before Soulis's arrival in Black Stone Bay and a major plot strand left unresolved at the end.

  Regardless of that, Blood Red is certainly worth reading. Moore is a writer who knows what he's doing and exercises complete control over the material. He takes on a large cast of characters, each of whom is convincingly portrayed, with the kind of attention to detail and subtle touches that invite empathy by ensuring they are never less than three dimensional. There's a wealth of subplots, such as Maggie's problems with her pimp, all of which enrich the narrative, and the writer takes no prisoners, really putting his characters through the grinder with no guarantee that anyone will get out the other side, so that the reader can take nothing for granted. The action scenes are well done, particularly at the end when Soulis and the vampires cut loose, with an almost cinematic feel to the mayhem taking place on the page, though I have to concede (minor whinge) that by this point I was getting rather tired of the comic cut out antics of Boyd and Holdstedter. There's nothing in Blood Red that is strikingly original or takes the vampire in a new direction, but it's an entertaining book, with a wealth of genre tropes put through their paces by a writer of considerable ability, and well worth a few hours of anyone's time.

  There's a more familiar urban centre under threat in Simon Clark's London Under Midnight (Severn House paperback, 214pp, 9.99 pounds), with vampires coming up out of the river Thames at night to feed on the capital's citizens. Clark has dabbled in this subgenre before, but doesn't seem able to come up with an original angle, making do with grounding the vampire menace in a foreign culture. Vampyrrhic had a Viking twist and this time around there's an African connection, the god Edshu having decided to test London and its people with a vampire plague. Fortunately, though the word is never used, there's a shaman conveniently on hand, perched atop a pole alongside the river, to explain things to the hero and tell him how to get rid of the vampires.

  Journalist Ben Ashton is sent to investigate strange graffiti that is popping up all over London—vampire sharkz they're coming to get you—and as a sideline looks into the disappearance of his old girlfriend April Connor. Naturally the two are connected. From shaman Elmo he learns of the vampires and that April has become one of them although, having a stronger will than the other victims, she is still fighting against the change. Ben, Elmo and April's fiancée Trajan, set out to save her and avert the disaster that threatens the city, with the final battle fought on an island in the middle of the Thames.

  Elmo's explanation for what is going on was a little too pat for my liking. Why these African deities, for whom we've not seen the slightest bit of proof before, should suddenly be taking an interest in London is beyond me? It is, like so much else here, simply a plot convenience, a hook on which to hang the story, but one that doesn't convince or add anything new to the vampire canon.

  Allowing for the contrived nature of the plot, this is a fast paced and exciting read, with lots of twists and turns, Clark having fun with the familiar material. One particular highlight is April's fight against vampirism, which in her mind she at times refers to as New Life and regards as a boon that should be spread to the rest of mankind so that there are moments when she comes on like a crazed evangelist, and the hunger for blood is put over well, an insatiable craving that it takes all of her will to deny. In contrast to this, yin to its dark yang, is Ben's
personal obsession, his unrequited love for April, which is holding him back and becomes the medium in which his mettle is tested. And there are suitably gory moments as well, with the image of the vampire sharks lingering in the mind, a powerful signifier of their menace, their attacks on humans as savage as they are repellent, while the final race for life and battle with the vampires is a compellingly taut end to a decent book, albeit one that was nothing special, not a novel that tried to do anything new with the tropes of the subgenre, simply polished them up a bit.

  With Anne Rice on extended sabbatical Laurell K. Hamilton is the uncrowned queen of the female writers producing vampire serials. Her heroine Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, lives in a world pretty much like our own except that the vampires and a whole host of other supernatural beings have come out of the closet and are living alongside mankind, tolerated as long as they abide by our laws, and with people like Anita ready to step in and dole out summary justice when they don't toe the line.

  The Harlequin (Orbit hardback, 422pp, 12.99 pounds), which is the fourteenth volume in the series, opens with Malcolm, head of the vampire church, asking Anita for help when two of his congregation are framed for murder. From Jean-Claude, her lover and vampire master of St Louis, Anita learns of the Harlequin, a secret order of vampires with incredible power and given authority to execute judgement on others of their kind. It seems that Jean-Claude and those close to him are being investigated, only the Harlequin appear to have thrown aside the rule book in favour of pursuing their own agenda.

  That's the main thrust of the book, but there's plenty of other stuff going on, with powerful vampire Belle Morte lurking in the background and the threat of Marmee Noir, the mother of all vampires, awakening from her long sleep, plus all the usual relationship stuff that arises out of Anita's attempts to control the ardeur, a power she has that feeds on sexual energy, obliging her to take on rather more lovers than the average healthy young woman (six, and still counting), and elsewhere we have the threat of sociopath Olaf and political manoeuvring within the ‘furry’ community, while Anita's friend and fellow vampire hunter Edward has to cope with a son who wants to follow in his footsteps.

  Yes, there's a lot happening here, but Hamilton makes a much better fist of integrating the various plot strands than she did with Incubus Dreams, the last book in the series that I read, and it's a better book for that, one that seems more firmly centred. The sidebar stuff, to do with relationships and the etiquette of sleeping with ‘monsters', goes on without getting in the way of the main plot, which is allowed to build naturally, with the final showdown with the renegade Harlequin a tour de force of invention, the battle swinging first one way and then another, holding the attention even while you know it can only end with Anita and her gang on top. Hamilton is still a bit too coy about sex for my liking, going for terms like ‘lengths’ and ‘openings’ in lieu of ‘penis’ and ‘vagina', which is begging a mortis and tenon metaphor for coitus at some future point, but if she is occasionally wishy washy in addressing the mechanics, the psychology of sex is one of Hamilton's strong suits. In that regard there's lots of interesting developments, as Anita and the various men in her life deal with the implications of the ardeur, while one of her lovers registers a need for S&M that causes Anita some perturbation.

  To summarise, The Harlequin works very well as a stand alone novel, but also moves along the various strands that weave throughout this series, with the hint of a battle royale with Marmee Noir looming on the horizon. Prior to reading this I'd been in two minds about the series, but now I'm engaged with Anita Blake once again and curious to see where Hamilton will take the character.

  There's also a vampire society of sorts in No Dominion (Orbit paperback, 248pp, 6.99 pounds), the second volume in another ongoing series, but in this case everything is very much under the human radar, Charlie Huston offering us a fusion of vampire fiction with gangster sensibility that brings to mind the freshness and noir feel of the early Anita Blake books.

  Huston's hero Joe Pitt is a vampire and native New Yorker, but affiliated to none of the Big Apple's vampire clans, a free agent who hires out to them for work. When a new drug, one that can addict vampires, hits town Joe is employed to discover its source by Terry, nominal head of the Society. The trail takes him to the territory of another clan, the Hood, and from there to that of the biggest clan, the Coalition, whose head honcho just so happens to hate Joe with a passion. Seems like everybody wants a piece of Joe's ass, either to kill him or to use Joe to further their own ends, and that includes the Enclave, a vampire sect with an especial interest in our hero. Things get complicated, and then some.

  This is a fast paced, take no prisoners kind of book, with much more going on than my plot summary might suggest and an interesting take on the vampire novel even if you can't quite get past the feeling that it would work just as well ‘gangs of New York’ style and without the bloodsucking twist. Pitt is an agreeable hero, one who is not afraid to mess up his hands when it's required, but with a ‘human’ side to him, as seen in his love for his AIDS victim girlfriend, while his smart mouth and penchant for Marlowesque putdowns entertain the reader as surely as they get him into trouble with everybody else. There's plenty of action, with gritty scenes of violence and unexpected plot twists, plus some larger than life characters, such as the ‘amiable’ Gravedigger, the cartoon cut out vampire Count with his camp followers and the barking mad white supremacist vampire who causes this whole mess in the first place. All in all, it's an engaging mix and Huston is a writer to keep an eye out for.

  Scott Westerfeld's Parasite Positive (ATOM Books paperback, 276pp, 5.99 pounds) is also set in New York and has a whole vampire society in hiding, but there the resemblance ends. The novel's protagonist Cal works for the so called Night Watch, an organisation that hunts down and contains vampires, or peeps as they are known (an abbreviation of parasite positive). Cal is himself a vampire, like most Night Watch operatives, but one of the lucky ones who can control his lusts. The peeps he captures are taken to a facility where their addiction can be curtailed by drug use. While hunting down the woman who infected him, Cal finds evidence that a new strain of the vampire parasite has developed, one that can cross over into other species such as cats, and that his ‘maker’ is deliberately infecting as many people as she can. But this is only the tip of the iceberg and Cal's subsequent discoveries have serious implications for vampires and humans alike.

  Scott Westerfeld's book offers an intriguing variation on the scientific approach to vampirism, which is here attributed to a parasite but, as the title reminds us, this is not necessarily a bad thing. To underline the point, alternating chapters of the book offer lively info dumps on the nature of parasites, how they can be both a burden and a blessing to mankind, all of this necessary spadework for the final revelation about the true nature of vampirism.

  One has the feeling that the plot doesn't quite add up, with the Night Watch being kept unnecessarily in the dark about so many things and the idea that vampires will be any more capable of combating the real threat than, say, men armed with rocket launchers seems slightly fanciful, and Cal's reaction to what he is told is not entirely convincing, while the character of Lacey, his love interest, annoyed me like heck by constantly referring to Cal as ‘Dude'. In an Anita Blake book that woman would be gagged.

  Regardless, Westerfeld does have a novel slant on the vampire archetype and does some interesting things with this old favourite. His writing is slick and assured, carrying the narrative along at a cracking pace, with moments of genuine creepiness. There are some great touches of incidental detail along the way, such as the parasite chapters, which are so often squirm inducing, and he brings humour to the table as well. In particular, within the context of the parasite he provides a convincing explanation for vampire traits such as an allergy to churchgoing and the Bible, with a modern interpretation of this phenomenon that provides the book's biggest laugh, and shows so much chutzpah that it's worth the price of admissi
on alone. Succinctly put, Parasite Positive is a fun read.

  Title aside, Fangland (Vintage Books paperback, 388pp, 7.99 pounds) is the most serious minded of this vampire sextet, and comes with a back cover blurb by literary heavyweight Audrey Niffenegger. Formerly a producer on 60 Minutes, John Marks writes of the world he knows, updating the archetypal figure of the vampire and superimposing it on the modern media landscape.

  Evangeline Harker, an associate producer on top rated TV show “The Hour", is sent to Transylvania to spy out a possible story on crimelord Ion Torgu, inviting inevitable Dracula jokes from her workmates, though curiously none of them seem to register the significance of her surname. Torgu lives in a remote town in the ruins of a burnt out hotel, and as it turns out is something far worse than a mere vampire, though he does consume blood in his own special way. Evangeline manages to save herself from his clutches, though she is changed by the encounter, becoming more feral, savage. But while she recuperates in a monastery, Torgu comes to America and begins to infiltrate the offices of “The Hour", initiating a terrible plan that only Evangeline can counter.

  Fangland reads like a cross between Stoker's Dracula, whose narrative technique of letters, journal entries etc it mimics and many of whose most famous tropes are reprised, and the J-Horror film Kairo (Pulse in the Hollywood version), with its echoes of madness and disturbing vision of the spirits of the dead subtly infiltrating our world.

  There are many things to commend this book. Marks knows the cutthroat world of TV news inside out, making his backdrop totally realistic, and he is excellent at characterisation, bringing these people to compelling life, their competitiveness and petty obsessions, all the inner demons that drive them on, with the rare oasis of sanity in this prime time wasteland. The writing is beautiful throughout, descriptive and evocative, but at its most compelling in the scenes of horror that punctuate the text, events that shock with their savagery, or are simply creepy, as when Torgu cuts his victim's foot and collects the slow dripping blood in a bucket, an image that lingers in the mind in the same way the vision of Dracula scaling his castle wall did for a previous generation.