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Post by dem bones on Jul 31, 2008 20:08:35 GMT
Philip Daniels - The Dracula Murders (Lorevan, Critics Choise, 1986) The Festival of Horror Ball at the country club was a great success, with everyone dressed as vampires, werewolves and assorted monsters.
But the fun was interrupted by a spectral figure calling himself Nosferatu, who warned the merry makers they were tampering with the unknown. People dismissed him as a crank: until a girl was ritualistically murdered on the golf course.
Superintendent Vine took charge of what one national paper called THE DRACULA MURDERS.
There were further murders and the Dracula label stuck.The authorities summoned Professor Cornfield, expert in Eastern European history.
Vine stuck to the police routine, but Cornfield looked outside. He set out to track down Nosferatu.
A bizarre bargain was struck.
A bargain between the living and the Undead. An Inspector Vine mystery, of which, it seems there are several. 190 pages of large-ish type, so essentially, around the same size as a '70's Nel. It even reads like one. The Great Bravington Country Club's "Festival Of Horror Ball" is in full swing, but during a performance by Sidney Page's Original Foxtrot Orchestra, a creepy guy climbs on-stage and grabs the mic. He's 'Nosferatu', a spokesman for the Council of the Undead, who are mighty peeved at this fancy dress travesty and all these posh types playing at being evil. The gatecrasher has not long been helped from the premises when young Liz Warren is fatally stabbed with an arrow on the golf course by a fellow in full Dracula drag who keeps asking her if she's "Lucy". The number one suspect, her boyfriend, Tom Benson, who had made a spectacle of himself by arriving at the Ball blind-drunk and bloodstained, has since died after swerving his car into a tree. The Greater Bravington elite live in mortal fear of bad publicity. As far as they are concerned, it's an open and shut case, but the Inspector has other ideas. So too does 'Nosferatu' who is as keen to see the killer brought to justice as Vine. The vampire knows who is responsible for the murders - a deluded occultist who thinks he's Vlad the Impaler. The wannabe must be punished for his blasphemy, for the true Vlad will be none too pleased at having his name taken in vain when, come "the day of Blackness," he returns to claim his rightful kingdom. Professor Cornfield and 'Nosferatu' - who really is Nosferatu - strike up an uneasy alliance to track down the culprit ... This one is available in the Linford Mystery series - in fact, it has been since at least 1992 - and there's even an audio version, four cassette tapes worth, read by John Whitman (Isis Audio, July 1994)
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