London, September 1888. Jack the Ripper roams the streets. A scream rings out from beneath the stage of the Lyceum Theatre…
A young ‘actress’ has been attacked, suffering peculiar bite wounds to her neck; an event that announces a series of strange, vampiric happenings, and thrusts an unwitting Bram Stoker – acting manager of the Lyceum and aspiring author – into the limelight, and the action.
Increasingly perplexed by the unsettling behaviour of his ‘Guv’nor’, the brilliant but mercurial actor, Henry Irving, and Irving’s acclaimed leading lady, Ellen Terry, Stoker soon starts suspecting the worst. And then, another attack reveals a vicious Prussian baron, returned to London as a vampire seeking revenge…
Alive with Gothic intrigue, reversal and surprise, Mr Stoker will keep the reader enthralled and confounded until its final, shocking scene – indeed, until its very last word.
‘This is a fully realised Gothic world, a stimulating mix of homely familiarity and lurking menace which will engage readers of all ages.’ David Punter, author of The Literature of Terror
Matthew Gibson is a leading scholar on Bram Stoker and the Gothic. Currently an Associate Professor at the University of Macau, he previously worked at the universities of Surrey and Hull, as well as in Poland and Bulgaria. Author of Dracula and the Eastern Question, and contributor to The Cambridge Companion to Dracula, Matthew curates Stoker resources for Oxford Bibliographies. Mr Stoker is his first novel.
My thoughts: this is a richly imagined tale of terror and blood, told through the eyes of Bram Stoker, manager of the Lyceum theatre, who later wrote the infamous Dracula. Working under the famous actor Henry Irving, Stoker was responsible for the day to day running of the theatre, while also training to be a barrister at the behest of his wife.
Here he, Irving, and his brother George, a surgeon, chase after a mysterious figure – the baron Lucarda, responsible for a series of murders (not the Whitechapel ones however) and a violent attack on Ellen Terry, the actress.
Peopled with real life associates and friends of Stoker, Gibson brings the Victorian world to life, from the thick London fog, to the rattling carriages and murky Underground railway. The story is fun and exciting, as these very normally sensible men chase across Europe in the pursuit of the deranged baron and get involved in the dark world of vampires and cult like orders of Rosicrucians and Masons.
Drawing on his scholarly research into Stoker’s life, this is a solid and well written Gothic thriller, complete with mysterious goings on in the theatre cellars and murders in Bayswater mansions. A treat for fans of the genre.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
ramblingmads 