FANGLAND
by JOHN MARKS
John Marks'' third
novel,Fangland , is no ordinary
vampire tale. Evangeline Harker embarks on what might be the worst business trip ever. She''s a producer for "The Hour," a television news show, and is sent to Romania to investigate a story and to
interview reputed Eastern European crime boss
ion Torgu for a segment on The Hour. She finds Ion Torgu, purported crime boss, but instead of giving her an interview, he takes her to his crumbling and creepy hotel in Transylvania, where she soon learns that he''s a vampire.They meet one evening in the town Brasov. No fangs here, though. Torgu''s teeth, though hideously stained, are rounded, not sharp. He relies on two henchmen to
murder his victims and pour the
blood in a bucket for him to drink.
Back in
new York, Evangeline''s disappearance causes an uproar at the office and a wave of guilt and recrimination. Then suddenly, several months later, she''s heard from: miraculously, she''s convalescing in a Transylvania monastery, her memory seemingly scrubbed. But then who was sending e-mails through her account toThe Hour employees? And what are those great coffin-like boxes of objects delivered to the office in her name from the Old Country? And why does the show''s sound system appear to be infected with some strange virus, an aural bug that coats all recordings in a faint background hiss that sounds like the chanting of...place-names? And what about the rumors that a correspondent has scored an interview with Torgu, here in New York, after all? As a very dark Old World atmosphere deepens in the halls of one of America''s most trusted television programs, its employees are forced to confront a threat beyond their wildest imaginings, a threat that makes gossip about an impending corporate shakeup seem very quaint.
The vampires in this novel don''t merely skulk about looking for blood. They are instead haunted by an eerie chant of place names: Treblinka, Olindo, Kosovo, Mycenae, Nanking—All places where terrible massacres have occurred. It''s no accident that the offices of "The Hour" look down over Ground Zero in New York.
Marks tells his story through the e-mails, therapy journals and diary entries of characters. His experience working as a producer at "60 Minutes" makes you feel like he knows just what to satirize at "The Hour." He''s not simply retelling
Dracula; his vampires are more like guardians of the dead than horror movie villains. But don''t think they''re not scary.Fangland is a novel that will keep you up late: It''s sad and terrifying and darkly funny.
John Marks has written the best vampire novel since Anne Rice published "Interview With The Vampire." Full disclosure time: I wrote my senior thesis on how Bram Stoker revolutionized the vampire archetype. I have read more vampire stories than I care to admit - from the "Raly-penned histories to the cheesy wannabe Rice knockoffs. While there is a glut of bloodsucker tales out there, few are any good. They too easily fall into satire territory, with a titular Count emoting a brooding Christopher Lee intensity or sulking about like an ennui-stricken Lestat. Or the vampire motif just becomes a device used to justify a dressed-up "virginal girl discovers her wild side" romance novel.
But Marks, a former producer with "60 Minutes," has succeeded where everyone else has failed. He went back to Stoker''s original novel and has updated it for the 21st century. And he shows that the characters and settings Stoker created are just as haunting today as their were a century ago....
One of the great under-appreciated beauties of Stoker''s "Dracula" is the bittersweet ending. While Dracula is vanquished and Mina and Jonathan are reunited, both of them have looked into the eyes of hell, and it''s obvious that neither will ever be the same again. If Stoker turned the vampire into a Victorian anti-hero, and Rice recast the vampire as a sensual philosopher, Marks has invented a vampire that is both haunting and haunted. Marks'' Torgu is a confessor to the millions of lost souls that still roam the earth - victims of murder, genocide, and war. He is drawn like a magnet to New York City, where 2,000 victims of September 11 are waiting to share their secrets. "Fangland" succeeds because it juxtaposes the primal horror of the vampire into the modern - and seemingly safe - world of television. And Marks skillfully details how Torgu manages to bring a modern newsroom into madness and murder.
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