Spying on Vampires

As you have likely gathered from the movies that I have reviewed on this little rag, horror movies are the general order of the day.  Now, how would that translate over to the written word?  Well, there's The Body Cartel and Inside the Perimeter, both fairly quality books from the rising author Alan Spencer (Incidentally, his latest work Ashes in Her Eyes is now available at Panic Press), and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.  Okay, so that last one is more of a comedy, but it has zombies.

Now, for reading pleasure, I had finished the first in a series from an author named Brian Lumley.  The series, entitled Necroscope, begins with the novel of the same name.  The story behind the first novel is that Harry Keogh has discovered that he can talk to the dead with a talent called necroscope.  This talent would serve him early on in allowing himself to do things that he normally wouldn't do, with some help from the dead spirits.  However, in Eastern Europe, there is a man by the name of Boris Dragosani, whose talent is to steal secrets from the dead, which is associated with the necromancer.  Dragosani also happens to have some Vamphyri in him, thanks in large part to an undead being in the ground by the name of Thibor Ferenczy.  So, what happens when the two super beings get together?  You will have to read on to find out.

The Vamphyri is just another word for vampire, except that Lumley's version of a vampire is far from typical, in that the vampire in this series feeds on live beings for control and has to actually be beheaded to be killed instead of the usual stake in the heart.  If the vampire aspect doesn't intrigue you, then maybe the spy aspect will, as Dragosani has his talents put to use by an underground Russian ESPionage group while Keogh would eventually be applying his talents with the British version of the ESPionage group (and no, that is not a typo).  Lumley builds up both characters to the point where you could relate to either one up until their paths cross.  As slowly as the story may develop, it all ends up into the powder keg that is the ending, which makes the entire story worth going through.