Johnny Alucard Kim Newman
Perhaps the most impressive aspect of Kim Newman’s continuing series of outrageously inventive vampire novels (collectively: Anno Dracula) has been the sheer prodigality of ideas thrown out by this most imaginative of writers. The first book in the sequence, Anno Dracula, is now widely regarded as one of the great fantasy novels of the modern age, with its sardonic wit, and clever post-modern structure, effortlessly combined with sheer storytelling nous. All of these elements, thankfully, are present and correct in the latest addition to the series, with a time period of 1976 – 1991, Johnny Alucard.
The author’s vampire reporter, Kate Reed, is on the set of Francis Ford Coppola’s revisionist film of Dracula. She comes into contact with John Popescu, a young vampire who travels from Transylvania to America and falls in with the louche set surrounding Andy Warhol, assuming a new identity, Johnny Pop, and formulating a drug which imbues its users with the abilities of vampires. The author’s secondary career — as a respected film journalist — ensures that this latest entry in the series is freighted with the kind of knowledge of films and filmmakers which incorporates both a pithy verisimilitude and a wry take on the industry into its bizarre scenario. As with the author’s most recent novel, the Sherlockian riff, Moriarty, the words ‘tour de force’ spring to mind; it’s a phrase which is used rather loosely these days, but Kim Newman buys every syllable of it here.
Johnny Alucard by Kim Newman is published by Titan Books
