DRACULA THE UN-DEAD – DACRE STOKER

It's still October and I have not fulfilled my quest for a great noir book for the month. The PR for this book sounded so good! Well, it wasn't. I didn't hate the whole thing and there were some great suspenseful scenes but as a whole I object to so much of it. It was billed as a sequel to Bram Stokers Dracula by his great grand nephew and therefore I thought the research and follow up would be awesome. The part I didn't seem to catch is that Dacre Stoker is a track and field coach which should have thrown up a red flag for me but...

It's twenty-five years after the death of Dracula at the hands of Jonathan Harker and Quincey Morris and the whole band if the first book is in shambles. The Harkers have a grown son, Quincey. Quincey has been pressured to go to law school, but longs to be in the theater. Jonathan is in a poor state of alcoholism, in a deep depression, and turning to prostitutes because Mina does not age as a result of her contamination by Dracula. And still, she continues to occasionally pine for Dracula. Enter Elizabeth Bathory a vampire stalking the streets of Paris and becoming a threat to the younger Harker. Drug-addicted old Seward appears to track her down. Aging Van Helsing also appears.

To make a long blog short, Dracula is not really dead and reappears (I hate that) and the younger Harker of course meets him while Dracula is performing as Richard the Third in Paris Theater posing as the famous Russion actor Basarab. Quincey becomes spellbound by him. Dracula/Basarab is also in this book not evil, but Bathory is, so Dracula/Basarab, in the book works to stop her and tries to destroy her and her minions. The bumbling, drug addicted Seward, and then Van Helsing are also trying to track her down. There is a lot of blood and guts death, sad romance, and the totally incredibly stupid concept of making Dracula the hero.

The part I liked was that during the story Quincey comes upon a writer named Bram Stoker who is trying to peddle his book about a vampire and then he finds out his parents are in the book. Nice twist to the tale and worked in pretty well. It just didn't go where I wanted it to go, and I expected too much.

But I don't want to say it was completely horrible and that one shouldn't read it because I know full-well what is not my cup-of-tea may be yours.