Thu 5 Jul 2012
Archived Review: GEOFFREY CAINE – Curse of the Vampire.
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Science Fiction & Fantasy[3] Comments
GEOFFREY CAINE – Curse of the Vampire. Diamond, paperback original; 1st printing, May 1991
If M*F is a magazine for detective mysteries only, this review certainly has no business being here. Luckily it isn’t, or at least since it’s my magazine, I can read and review what I like. (Can’t I?)
The book does feature a retired Chicago cop, however, and maybe that’s enough connection to make it legal, but Abraham Stroud’s days of retirement are not likely to be easy ones. This is only the first of many adventures to come.
This one takes place in Stroud’s home town, but according to page 183, there are “all manner of nasty creatures the world over.” The “family” of vampires in this book are only a taste of what lies ahead. (Next in the series: off to Russia and Wake of the Werewolf.)
The gimmick is vampire today is apparently to find some sort of pseudo-scientific rationale for their existence, and to create some sort of well-suited setting for this enemy of man, one in which they can find new ways to survive in an otherwise alien world.
This is all well and good, but it can backfire on them, as it does in this book. This perhaps may require a plot alert warning, but I’ll forgo it and tell you that what Stroud and friends come across is a chemical substance called succinylcholine (S-choline, for short) which is a deadly poison to the creatures.
Stroud’s demented handyman — yes, there’s one of those, too — is the only one who knows about it, but it works. (Keep the name of the chemical in mind. Who knows? It may come in handy some time.)
It wouldn’t have been difficult to have come up with a “scientific” explanation for the stuff as well — you know, essence of garlic or something — but unfortunately, the author didn’t take the chance to do so.
But the book ends with the grandest sort of cemetery shootout, a true pulp style holocaust that inflicts tremendous damage on both sides. In fact, if you are a fan of the pulps, this is as close a descendant to those old magazine stories as I’ve read in a long time. Wild imaginative story-telling is a grand old tradition to be following in, and I’m glad to see it still around today.
May 1991 (revised).
Bibliographic Notes: Geoffrey Caine was the pseudonym of Robert W. Walker, who has made a good career of writing novels in the horror/psychological suspense/thriller vein, mostly under his own name. There were only three books in this series. I don’t remember reading either of the other two, but it’s possible that I did. (Note that I no longer see the need for making excuses for posting material on this blog which is not purely detective fiction.)
The Abraham Stroud series —
Curse of the Vampire. Diamond, 1991.
Wake of the Werewolf. Diamond, 1991.
Legion of the Dead. Diamond, 1992.
Vampires, werewolves and zombies. You can’t go into a bookstore today and avoid them. Caine was obviously a man ahead of his time.
July 5th, 2012 at 3:51 pm
HOHOHOOOO !
Steve turns Tyrant King and swamps us with bloodlusty vampires !
Must be some sort of inverse X-mas in summer !
The Doc
July 6th, 2012 at 9:04 am
STEVE – first, thanks for recognizing the value of a fun story, a fun entertaining read having its own worth. I did the 3 for Diamond which was bargain basement books for Pengun/Berkley and when the line died a sad death, the only author they retained and bumped up was yours truly, so I went on to do the DECOY Series, the Grant Series, and sadly, Diamond had wanted to do a book a month in horror the way they did westerns, and so they recruited me to do the first books, to give it an author name, but they did not get the huge numbers they wanted, so they dropped the series. I have done a FOURTH as an Original to Kindle title – continuing with Abraham Stroud after all these years…like riding a bike. The entire series is available on amazon kindle shelf. After the Zombie Eyes in the Bloodscreams Series begun with Vampire Dreams and Werewolf’s Grief (changed cover art and titles) BAYOU WULF came into being. It is as much Urban Fantasy as it is horror. I like working with werewUlves and it was inspired by Beowulf in the midst of my teaching Beowulf to a high school class. Fact is BAYOU WULF is up FREE for any and all takers this weekend of July 6th.
Thanks for your kind and complimentary remarks. A fellow author I admire by name of GRANT called the series the BEST he had seen in YEARS as well. Somehow the series got little to no play but yeah, I loved doing thse books. Have since gone on to do 11 Instinct titles – medical examiner series, a number of alternate historicals as in spooky retallings of Titanic story and Bismarck story as well as Salem Witchcraft story – all on Kindle shelf and all under Robert W. Walker as none of my four pen names hit it as big as my real name.
I have presence on facebook and twitter, google and amazon.
Again thanks and for posting this on my FB wall.
ROB Walker
July 7th, 2012 at 11:44 am
Rob
Thanks for the inside info on the Abraham Stroud series and how it came to be. It’s also good to know that you’ve done a fourth book in the series, after all these years. From the way you describe it, you seem to have had a good time writing it.
I don’t imagine that Diamond had any means to push the series, so it isn’t much of a surprise that sales were low. I have all three they did in paperback, but as I said in this old review, I don’t believe I read either of the other two. Right now I wish I had.
I don’t own either a Kindle or a Nook, and in all likelihood, I probably never will. I’m only tempted from time to time when I hear of books like your fourth Stroud adventure. I hope sales are going well!
Generally speaking, I have a feeling that that mass market paperbacks, which have been around for decades, are hard on the road to extinction, forced out of existence by ebooks. Collectors like myself may care, but most readers probably won’t. (At the moment I can’t see ebooks being collectible in any way, now or in the future.)