Restoking the original vamp

Dracula: The Un-Dead, Dacre Stoker, HarperCollins, $34.99.

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WHAT SAY you're an aspiring author who needs to lift your debut novel out of the slush pile? If you have a famous last name like Stoker, you mine your ancestor's fame and publish an "authorised" sequel to his bestselling work, of course.

The problem comes when the original novel, penned by Bram Stoker in 1897, is what's considered sacred text by most vampire buffs. Stoker laid out the original prototype for the vampire – fear of sunlight, crumbling into dust in death, sleeping in coffins, hurt by silver, etc – that's still in use even today.

Any sequel to Dracula will, therefore, suffer the same kind of obsessive scrutiny from loyal fans as a new species of rat would from the scientific community. So does Stoker-the-younger live up to his famous surname?

The Un-Dead picks up 25 years after the original novel finished. Drac is long dead and dusted and Jonathan and Mina's marriage has crumbled under the strain of secrets from the past.

The story follows Quincey Harker, their son (who was just a wee tot at the end of the previous book), as he tries to make it as an actor in London. It's here that he stumbles upon a production of Dracula, produced by, wait for it... Bram Stoker.

Here's where it's difficult to navigate between fact and fiction. Like the fictional Bram, the real Abraham Stoker was also a theatre manager. He managed the West End Lyceum Theatre for 27 years and in his spare time, he wrote short stories and eventually a few novels, including Dracula.

Fortunately, the sequel is not a dramatised biography of Bram.

Dacre focuses on a rather more interesting angle – that Mina and Dracula had a star-crossed romance – and in doing so, has infused Drac with a sexiness that wasn't there in his original incarnation and brought the story to a new audience, who might have thought the old story too fusty and muddled for these modern times.

- © Fairfax NZ News