... treating the differently alive was not only more interesting than catering to the ordinary human population, it was in many ways a great deal more rewarding. [loc. 90]
Dr Greta Helsing (her family dropped the 'van' when they relocated from the Netherlands to London in the 1930s) in the is a GP catering primarily to the supernatural community. Her friends, acquaintances and assistants include vampires (foremost among whom is Edward, Lord Ruthven, who insists that Polidori's novel is mostly libel); ghouls, witches, mummies ... and when another vampire, the self-tormenting Sir Francis Varney, is attacked by a group of men dressed as monks, Greta is called in to help. It quickly becomes apparent that the attack on Varney is connected with a series of gruesome murders that also have a religious aspect: the 'Rosary Ripper' is roaming London and nobody is safe.
This was a fun read, though I was vexed by the frequent Americanisms. (No, we do not refer to Dennis Nilsen as 'the British Jeffrey Dahmer', nor do we have blood drives or attorneys.) What Shaw does really well here is sketching an evolving social group, with new characters introduced into a comfortable community of friends and acquaintances -- all of whom are idiosyncratic individuals displaying a realistic spectrum of physiological and psychological issues, from Ruthven's deadly boredom to Varney's self-loathing to Fastitocalon's disregard for his own wellbeing.
This felt very much a character-driven novel to me. That's not to say that the plot is dull: there were moments where everything seemed hopeless for one or more of the characters, and moments when the villain (embedded in truly scary technology) seemed invincible. But these moments mattered because of their effect on Shaw's cast. The characters, and characterisation, kept me reading and incline me to seek out more in the series.
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