Here’s my four star review of BLOOD WEST by THOMAS D. CLAGETT (published by Five Star Publishing.) You can find the review on Goodreads and Amazon.co.uk.
MY REVIEW:
Intriguing
western-horror hybrid
Acclaimed, award-winning novelist THOMAS CLAGETT
follows up his fine novel of the Alamo, ‘Line
of Glory,’ with something completely different. ‘Blood West’ mixes the western with horror and the supernatural.
It’s mostly set in a New Mexico town in 1885, where the changing West is
represented by the appearance of telephones, electric lights and elevators. A
female Pinkerton Detective works undercover, investigating a series of grisly
killings. She soon suspects something neither wholly human nor animal is
stalking the town as darkness falls. Could it even be a nightmare from the Old
World visiting the New – a vampire? Clagett ratchets up the tension as the body
count mounts and the writing is expert: ‘‘The same stars were ugly pockmarks in
the blackness of a long, terrible night." Recommended.
Here’s the BLURB for BLOOD WEST:
Summer, 1885. Something inexplicable has come to the
railroad town of Las Vegas in the Territory of New Mexico. Asked to
investigate, the Pinkerton Detective Agency sends their best detective. Her
name is Hattie Lawton. But no one can know her true identity or why she has
been sent, because, as Hattie knows well, no one can keep a secret. She poses
as a nurse, hired to tend the consumptive patients staying at the Montezuma,
the newest and grandest hotel in the famous Harvey House chain. Finding
information proves difficult for Hattie. Deputy Sheriff Antonio Valdes resents
her attempts. Father John Lanigan fears her, but something else frightens the
priest even more: a creature that some people swear can change its shape—a
creature that is afraid of nothing.
VAMPIRES
I plundered this information on vampires from
Wikipedia. The subject matter encompasses everything
from a South American bat, a 15th Century warlord, a gothic novel
from the 1890s to a teenage Californian girl from the 1990s! This blog offers only the briefest look. It’s
not intended to be remotely exhaustive, otherwise it would take 6 months to
read!
IN FOLKLORE
In folklore the vampire is
an undead person rising from the grave after death, subsisting by feeding on
the vital essence (generally the blood) of the living.
Tales of vampiric creatures have
existed for millennia, in Mesopotamian, Hebrew, Ancient Greek, Roman and other cultures.
Superstitious fears of the dead returning are evident, for example, in a 9th
Century grave in Denmark, bearing ‘a grave binding inscription’ used to keep
the deceased in its grave. The vampire's head, body, or clothes could be spiked
and pinned to the earth to prevent rising. Below is a 13th century
skeleton found in Bulgaria stabbed through the chest with an iron rod.
Almost every culture has mention of
blood-drinking demons. Creatures attempting to drink blood from men were
depicted on shards of pottery excavated from ancient Persia.
The term vampire was
popularized in the early 18th Century when the local superstitions
about these creatures in the Balkans and Eastern Europe were first widely
reported in Western Europe. The belief in vampires spread dramatically across the
continent, resulting in outbreaks of mass hysteria, corpses being staked or
beheaded, people being accused of vampirism and even public executions. This
hysteria, commonly referred to as the "18th-Century Vampire Controversy",
raged for a generation. The word vampire (as vampyre)
first appeared in English in 1732, in news reports about the vampire
"epidemics" in Eastern Europe. The term was derived from the
German Vampir.
In the earlier traditions, before the
19th Century, vampires were usually described as bloated in
appearance, and ruddy, purplish, or dark in colour; these characteristics were
often attributed to the recent drinking of blood. They often wore shrouds. They
were corpses who rose from their graves at night to suck the blood of the
living, after which they returned to their cemeteries. The persons so sucked
waned, grew pale, and fell into ill health, while the feeding corpses grew
fat, rosy-cheeked, and enjoyed an excellent appetite. Evidence that a vampire
was active in the area included the death of cattle and sheep as well as humans.
The origins of these traditions is
sometimes ascribed to the ignorance of people in pre-industrial societies about
how decomposition effects the body after death and their attempts to
rationalize this. Rates of decomposition vary depending on temperature and soil
composition. Corpses swell as gases from decomposition accumulate in the torso
and the increased pressure forces blood to ooze from the nose and mouth. This
causes the body to look plump, well-fed and "ruddy" - changes that
are all the more striking if the person was pale or thin in life. Darkening of
the skin is also caused by decomposition. So, it’s not surprising the
pre-industrial man, seeing corpses dug up and looking healthier than they had
been in life, suspected some demonic force was at work.
THE VAMPIRE TRANSFORMED BY LITERATURE
The image of the vampire was transformed
in 1819 with the publication of the first prose fiction piece concerned with
vampires: ‘The Vampyre.’ Initially
credited to the poet LORD GEORGE BYRON, it was in reality authored by Byron's
personal physician, JOHN POLIDORI. It was highly popular and influential.
The vampire theme continued in ‘penny dreadful’ serial publications such
as ‘Varney the Vampire’ (1847,) JOSEPH
SHERIDAN LE FANU’s 1872 novel ‘Carmilla’
and the quintessential vampire novel, ‘Dracula’
by the Irish writer BRAM STOKER, published in 1897.
BRAM STOKER (1847-1912)
In the course of these 19th
Century works of fiction the vampire morphed from a creature that had been
plump and rosy-cheeked (or even purplish) to something usually tall, deathly-pale
and gaunt, definitely not reflected in mirrors. Unlike the vampires of folklore they were vulnerable to, and hid from, sunlight. They sprouted fangs,
while the trademark long black cloak didn’t appear until stage productions of the 1920s. Perhaps
most notably, Bram Stoker gave his lead vampire a name – COUNT DRACULA – the
persona (at least on the surface) of a charismatic, gentlemanly and
sophisticated aristocrat, and the ability to turn into a bat.
VAMPIRE BATS
Vampire bats were integrated
into vampire folklore after they were discovered on the South American mainland
in the 16th century. A purely New World species, they had nothing to do with
the vampires of folklore, who had existed long before the bats were discovered.
The bats were named after the folkloric vampire rather than vice versa.
WHAT’S IN A NAME – COUNT DRACULA
VLAD THE IMPALER
The original COUNT DRACULA appears to be VLAD
the THIRD (born c.1428), a ruler of Wallachia, the southern region of Romania. He
is often considered one of the most important leaders in Wallachian history and
is a national hero of Romania. Diplomatic reports in the 15th century
referred to him as Dracula, Dracuglia, or Drakula. Late
in his life he signed two letters as "Dragulya" or
"Drakulya". Dracula means "[the son] of Dracul (or the
Dragon)". In modern Romanian, dracul means "the
devil."
Vlad seems to be guilty of many evils, but
there’s no record vampirism was one of them.
Apart from residing in the same country (Romania) he seems to
have nothing in common with a late 19th Century sophisticated aristocrat
who is also a vampire. So why did Bram
Stoker choose to name his chief vampire after a ruthless 15th
Century warlord?
Bram Stoker had
researched vampire superstitions of Transylvania in Romania (even though Vlad
was ruler of Wallachia, an adjoining province.) Stoker authorities say the
author "apparently did not know much about" Vlad the Impaler,
"certainly not enough for us to say that Vlad was the inspiration
for" Count Dracula, and that any connection to Vlad is “tenuous.” Stoker's
working papers for his book contain no references to Vlad. The name of the Dracula
character in all drafts but the later ones is 'Count Wampyr'.
So why Count
Dracula? We’ll never know. Viewing his decision as a fellow novelist, I think
it’s quite likely Stoker just thought it was a great name and decided to use
it, without knowing much about who the real Dracula was!
Since the success of this book the vampire has become
a dominant figure in the horror genre, still popular in the 21st century,
spawning books, films, TV shows, and video games.
There’s only time for the very briefest of
looks at these depictions, they deserve a separate blog. Vampires in prose
fiction include ANNE RICE's highly popular and influential ‘Vampire Chronicles’ books (1976-2003.)
Film and television
Dracula is a major character in more
films than anyone but SHERLOCK HOLMES. Many early films were either based on
the novel Dracula or closely derived from it. These included
the 1922 silent German Expressionist horror film ‘Nosferatu’ featuring the first film portrayal of Dracula.
CHRISTOPHER LEE
PETER CUSHING
This hit movie spawned seven sequels,
with Lee reprising the role in all but two of them. By the 1970s, vampires in
films had diversified with works such as ‘Count
Yorga, Vampire’ and an African Count in 1972's ‘Blacula.’
On TV 1972’s ‘Kolchak: The Night Stalker’ revolved around reporter Carl Kolchak
hunting a vampire in Las Vegas. This led to a brief spin-off TV series.
DARREN McGAVIN as ‘Kolchak: The Night Stalker’
The film ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ spawned a hit TV series of the same name,
running 1997-2003. Buffy (portrayed by SARAH MICHELLE GELLAR) was a 16-year-old high school girl in California who had to interrupt her studies to dispose of the
numerous vampires and demons infesting the area. Her adventures mixed
excitement and comedy, managing to send up most of the clichés inherent in the
genre along the way.
Buffy and her vampire slayers
Out west vampires turn up out west as early as 1959 in CURSE OF THE UNDEAD.
“A legendary, murderous monster on the
loose, a town in fear for their lives, a posse of lawmen, and a lady Pinkerton
agent are brought together in author Thomas Clagett’s riveting thriller, Blood
West. Clagett’s remarkable ability to build tension and suspense had
me on the edge of my seat until the last page.”
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