HALLIE EPHRON: Now for one of our favorite guests, Jeri Westerson, here to reveal all the gory (truly!) details about her new IRREGULAR DETECTIVE MYSTERY. She'll take us to Baker Street with a pastiche blending Holmes and DRACULA!
Over to Jeri...
JERI WESTERSON: My Irregular Detective Mystery series follows the detecting exploits of former Baker Street Irregular Tim Badger and his partner Ben Watson, under the mentorship of Sherlock Holmes.
In my newest novel in the series THE VAMPYRE CLIENT, Badger and Watson’s client is a pale man, with dark glasses, has an allergy to sunlight, and studies bats.
He asks Badger and Watson to go to his estate in Ashwell to convince the suspicious villagers he is not a vampire…when tragedy strikes!
You know. Just a typical Victorian mystery.
I do like my research, and for this story, some of that research was vampires. I dove deep. And I came away with something I could really sink my teeth into.
Starting from the beginning doesn’t mean we will be starting with Bram Stoker’s novel DRACULA from 1897 (two years after the timeframe of my novel), nor the folklore from the Balkans where some folks are still buried beheaded if they are suspected of being vampires, or with a brick shoved down their skull’s gullet, but rather with 1819’s THE VAMPYRE, by John Polidori, finishing a story that Lord Byron told during that celebrated weekend where Mary Shelley came up with FRANKENSTEIN. This vampyre was a nasty piece of work, breaking hearts and sucking blood.
But it didn’t stop there. In the 1820s, Paris was lousy with plays about sexy vampires. Le Vampire; Le Trois Vampires ou le clair de la lune; Encore un Vampire; Les Étrenne d’un Vampire …and more! These were all vampires of the sexy variety, and boy, did Paris love them!
But if you are thinking of a sexy portrayal, you’d be wrong. What Dracula really looked like in the book is someone thin and pale of face, a long, white mustache, pointed nose and ears, protruding teeth, nearly a unibrow, and sparse curly hair on his head but hairy everywhere else, including his palms. Not exactly a sexy times kind of vampire.
With the emergence of early silent films, we begin to see the sexy vamp again. And the scary ones.
London After Midnight, the lost Lon Chaney Sr. silent film where we see Chaney in particularly scary makeup, and then Nosferatu, the copyright violation film that widow Mrs. Bram Stoker fought for decades to suppress and was almost successful (and, incidentally, looked the most like her husband’s creation). And then finally, the 1931 film Dracula based on the play, both starring Bela Lugosi, who was supposed to be considered sexy back in the day.
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Do vampires see their own reflections?
Stoker adopted some characteristics of folkloric vampires for his own: aversion to garlic, staking as a means of killing them. But he invented the idea that they must be invited into one's home, sleep on earth from their homeland, and have no reflection in mirrors.
Do they wear capes?
The cape-wearing Vampire with a high collar comes from the illustrations accompanying VARNEY THE VAMPIRE OR THE FEAST OF BLOOD from 1845.
Can they turn into a bat…a wolf…a gerbil?
The lesbian vampire of Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla (1872) can transform into a cat, as Dracula can transform into a dog…and a bat. Gerbil’s might be a little too cutesy. And short.
And since we are talking about my Sherlockian Pastiche here, let’s refer back to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his Sherlock Holmes short story The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire It was first published in 1924.
The story -- with spoilers ahead:
Mr. Ferguson tells Holmes that he lived in Peru and married a Peruvian woman while there, bringing back not only the wife to England but souvenirs of Peru. He also has a 15-year-old son, Jack, from his first wife. He was alarmed when he caught his wife sucking blood from their baby son’s neck. Mrs. Ferguson also struck her stepson Jack several times and then sequestered herself away, never telling her husband why. Holmes, of course, worked it out long before he and Dr. Watson arrived to the Sussex home; that Jack was jealous of the new child and had been shooting Peruvian poisoned darts at the baby from the collection his father had, so that the mother was forced to suck out the poison but did not tell her husband about it for fear the family would break up. Boarding school was probably a good option.
Doyle here, as he had in his other two “supernatural” stories, one being the short story The Adventure of the Creeping Man, followed the popular penny dreadful genre; lurid tales of vampires, ghosts, fiends, and non-supernatural villains.
Only in Doyle’s case – even though he was a believer in séances and mysticism – wouldn’t allow his scientific detective to believe in the supernatural, and always sussed out the true cause of these events.
So it is important that when you encounter vampires, you know who you are dealing with; an unsexy white-mustachioed Dracula; a bat-looking Nosferatu; a sparkling vampire in Seattle; or hang-dog Louis in New Orleans. If you aren’t exited around them, a stake through the heart is the way out of that relationship.
Which really could be said for ALL relationships.
And now, a bit of a Sherlockian Supernatural Quiz!
1. Besides the Sussex Vampire, Doyle wrote two other supernatural stories. Was one of them:
(A) The Adventure of the Lazy Ghost
(B) The Dreadful Account of the Deadly Sea Slug
(C) The Hound of the Baskervilles
(D) The Case of the Unpleasant Odor
2. In The Hound of the Baskervilles, what sort of creature did Holmes encounter?
(A) Scooby-Doo
(B) A swearing Parrot
(C) A ghost cat
(D) A gigantic hound
3. In The Adventure of the Creeping Man, why is that man creeping?
(A) He’s constipated
(B) He’s a burglar
(C) He injected himself with monkey extract
(D) He’s lazy
4. The creeping man uses a ‘creeper.’ What is it?
(A) A vine
(B) A walker
(C) A new dance move
(D) A hip replacement
Answers to the Quiz: 1 is C, 2 is D, 3 is C, and 4 is A
THE VAMPYRE CLIENT, book 4 in An Irregular Detective Mystery series, releases today in ebook, paperback original, and audiobook. https://books2read.com/u/3G0w2K
HALLIE: So how was your knowledge of vampire lore?
Happy Book Birthday, Jeri . . . so much vampire lore that I did not know . . .
ReplyDeleteThanks, Joan. And me neither! I had no idea about a lot of this that has become part of our social literacy. Wild!
DeleteHappy Book Birthday, Jeri! I'm a bit behind in your series, but this story is incentive to catch up! Did your research keep you up at night? I read one chapter of Dracula and it fueled years of night terrors! Not funny.
ReplyDeleteGreat question, Judy - It would keep me up, too.
DeleteThanks, Judy. It was strange stuff, to be sure. I did a touch of this research in my Crispin Guest Medieval Noir series with THE DEEPEST GRAVE. People back then and in certain Balkan nations even today, didn't understand that fingernails did not continue to grow when you died (one's skin would be pulling away from your nails as it decomposed) and when they dug up fresh graves on suspected bloodsuckers, they'd find blood on their lips (because once one is dead, there was no more protection from the bacteria in one's stomach and it would run rampant, sending all that material out of every orifice it could find...including the lips). But my Sherlockian series is kinder and gentler, so nothing like that appears in it. :)
DeleteWelcome Jeri! I'm in awe of your creativity. I know a lot more about vampires this morning than I ever have! Wishing you lots and lots of sales...
ReplyDeleteI wonder what it is about the story that has given it such "sticking" power.
DeletePeople like to be scared. The undead monster is pretty scary. The sexy undead monster is also pretty scary, perhaps, in some ways, even more so, because you are taken in by it. But it has never lost its fascination in the hundred plus years since Dracula. And obviously, those tales go back much farther than Bram Stoker's tale.
DeleteCongratulations, Jeri! What amazing stuff you uncovered. I remember the Hound of the Baskervilles but not the Creeping Man. Must reread that one.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Edith. I think that when most people come across Holmes, it is with The Hound of the Baskervilles. There were only four novels written, of which Hound is one, but 56 short stories that fewer are familiar with. The Creeping Man is a pretty strange tale. Doyle was really walking the line between reality and fantasy. Though in Victorian times, injection with monkey glands was thought to bring back virility to men.
DeleteGood thing it's bright morning instead of reading this right before bed! Nosferatu is particularly terrifying. On the other hand, the Vampire la Rose looks more like he'd be helping you choose the best nightie for exposing your neck.
ReplyDeleteThere are people who actually believe in vampires, right now. Have you found any cult groups while you were doing your research, Jeri?
I'm sure it's something about blood.
DeleteI did not, Karen. It wasn't applicable to the time period. It's strange that people want to believe so strongly in something like this. What is it we lack in society that makes one give up all logic and science?
DeleteThat is a very good question, Jeri.
DeleteCongratulations on the new book, Jeri! I got three out of four right on the quiz, but absolutely did NOT guess that the creeping man had injected himself with monkey extract. Also, I nearly did a spit take as I read your final sentence in the summary of The Adventures of the Sussex Vampire. I appreciate a laugh like that first thing in the morning.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Susan. I just can't help it. :)
DeleteCongrats Jeri! What an interesting post from you. I remember reading The Hound of the Baskervilles as a teen and became a Sherlock Holmes fan. He's still a master at plotting imo.
ReplyDeleteOr should say Sir Arthur Cannon Doyle who is the master plotter.
DeleteI know what you meant. :) He had a good handle on popular literature, that's for sure. If I'm honest with myself, I think I prefer the short stories. There's so much going on in so little space. And you can really see throughout how much Holmes and Watson really do care about the other.
DeleteHi Jeri, It's almost as if Sherlock Holmes the character has over-shadowed the author.
DeleteWelcome, Jeri. I have to admit, aside from Bela Lugosi my vampire knowledge is thin. My daughter went to see the most recent Nosferatu movie and said it was good - she likes horror.
ReplyDeleteI did get 100% on the quiz - I don't know if that reflects my vampire knowledge or familiarity with Holmes.
Well, Liz, there are so many iterations of vampires now that it's hard to know where any of it comes from. Only a deep dive will do it.
DeleteThis is reminding me ... Decades ago I saw a Broadway dramatization of DRACULA starring Frank Langella - a most irresistible dapper Dracula (he was dating Lyndon Johnson's daughter at the time.) So sexy. I'd have offered up my neck in an instant.
ReplyDeleteHa! Yes, I wish I had seen that or that they had filmed it. The Edward Gorey designed sets kill me!
Delete