Marc Lovell - Vampire In The Shadows

[dem bones]

Marc Lovell - Vampire In The Shadows (Coronet, 1977)

Is there any way out of this horror other than the obvious?
I don't want to die. I do want to stop being a vampire.

Blurb:

So ran the letter in a woman's magazine that had become a worldwide media sensation. It was signed simply 'Shaply Girl', and it brought television cameras and reporters flooding to the tiny isolated village of Shaply, deep in the Yorkshire Moors. Some weeks later, when Shaply was left to an uneasy quiet, another visitor arrived.

Peter Manfield had been intrigued by all the publicity. And he soon found that there was indeed something very odd about Shaply. The particularly nasty game of 'Ghoulies' played by the village children; the hideous leper he thought he saw in a wooded hollow; the strangely threatening sexual advances of the village 'Vamp'; the bizarre volume on Vampirism he found in a local authoress' bookshelves; the desperate fingers fumbling at his pyjama collar as he lay in bed. But most disturbing of all was the macabre gibbet at the crossroads, the stake newly sharpened to a point ... Terror lurked in Shaply. The fear of something inexpressibly evil ....

Shaply, population 127, is situated two miles from Keighley on the Yorkshire Moors. The 'vampire' story has attracted the attention of Peter Manfield, a 32 year old Canadian who takes up lodgings at The Falcoln's Hood Pub and passes himself off to landlady Betty Storm and her regulars as a birdwatcher. In reality, he's a man with a dark secret and he's really come to find whoever wrote the letter. Shaply is one of those places where everybody knows everyone else's business, and its not long before he's met all the pillars of the community. Chief among these is the fabulously wealthy novelist Georgina Maycroft who pretty much runs the show in that everybody owes her a big favour. Among her subordinates are Sergeant Waterford, the bumbling village bobby, Theresa 'the vamp' Lockridge, Minnie Braithwaite (Betty Storm's skivvy), invalid chess-master Mr. Trent and his daughter, Jane (the love interest), a gloomy shopkeeper, nosey piss artist Stan Laker and a few minor characters. As you'd expect in a Yorkshire village, they're all exceptionally friendly and forever plying him with invitations, food and drink, but .... something is very wrong. Who wrote the letter? Who keeps breaking into his room and trying to molest him? Is there really a coven practicing nude rituals in the night? Why would Mrs. Maycroft have a copy of the rare, sympathetic treatise An Enquiry Into The Existence Of Vampires in her collection? Why won't 'the vamp' let him go all the way with her? What is 'Ghoulie' all about? All these questions are driving me insane!

This is an engrossing read that suddenly becomes BRILLIANT for a few pages when things take a turn for The Wicker Man and a Vampirefinder General is revealed among the villagers. Unfortunately, if ever a book was a page too long, it is this one. Lovell can't resist the temptation to tie up every loose end and, instead of settling on one, relatively satisfying, conclusion, he throws in a double twist ending which just seems gimmicky. Having said that, this is still well worth a read and at 157 pages it's another that could easily have been a NEL.

File under: It's A Hard Life In The Country