Jeanne Kalogridis - Covenant with the Vampire

[andydecker]

Jeanne Kalogridis – Covenant with the Vampire (Dell, 1995, 352 p., Original 1994 Headline)

On a grassy knoll in the Carpathians a young man, newly returned from London, stands in a family graveyard. What he sees is an unspeakable desecration, a crime against his father and the family Dracul …
A FORBIDDEN CARESS …
In an ancient castle an English journalist disappears, while a young woman awaits the illicit embrace of her great-uncle, Prince Vlad …
AN ANCIENT HUNGER …
In a land of superstition and faith, an evil covenant has been kept for four centuries. Now the young man, Arkady Tsepesh, has returned to inherit that pact, to learn the dark truths that will seize his soul and everything he holfs dear …
CONVENANT OF THE VAMPIRE …
A novel that dares to penetrate the myth of the family Dracul by beginning fifty years before Bram Stoker's Dracula. Here is the shattering chronicle of one man's dark heritage, of a family bound by blood, torn by the terrible choices their own evil would demand …

Jeanne Kalogridis is the real name of J.M. Dillard, who wrote a lot of Star Trek novels, even did six of the movie novelizations. This was an ambitious (with an A) undertaking to re-tell the Dracula story as a trilogy, in the next parts are Van Helsing and the rest of the gang.  This first volume is quite original in places, even if it goes the descendants of Vlad route. Of course it uses the epistolary form. But the conclusion is a big letdown, at least for me, some mystical nonsense which as as far removed form Stoker als is possible. But your mileage etc.

Kalogridis is still publishing historical novels.

[Dr Strange]

"On a grassy knoll..." Seriously? Does the story start with "It was a dark and stormy night..."?