Another of those old 80s paperbacks with the glorious covers I have lying aound the house.
I wish some publishers would go back to this type of cover. They really do have a magic about them.
This is one book that fulfills the promise of the cover as well.
Nazis versus vampires. It's certainly the first time I've come across this combination. Thrown into the mix are an elderly and infirm Jewish scholar and his daughter, and a mysterious stranger.
It opens with an SS officer, swiftly rising through the ranks, being called into his commanding officers office and sent to help a major in a remote outpost in Transylvania. the Major has sent an urgent plea for help "Request immediate relocation, Something is murdering my men"
So off he goes with his squadron of Einsatzkommandos to render their assistance in their own inimitable way.
The scene is set for a showdown between human evil and a centuries old force of nature.
The Major in charge of the Keep is not a member of the party. The only reason he still has rank is because of his record for heroism in the previous world war. His refusal to join the party is the reason why he's been shunted off to a remote outpost where it's not expected anything will happen. Out of sight, out of mind. How wrong the high command were... This gives us a relatively sympathetic German character to follow in the first third of the book. It also provides a more balanced view of the Germans that at least one of them is a good guy at heart and not all Germans were nazis. As we find out later on, his reasonable nature has more influence on the plot than we realise.
The truly sympathetic characters (the Jewish scholar and his daughter) don't make much of an appearance early on in the book, and it's over a hundred pages in before they are taken to the Keep so we need someone we can actually not want to see immediately slaughtered to follow early on.
The novel is surprisingly well written (apart from a laughable sex scene) and very well paced. This is one of the few books to reference Vlad Tepec and Dracula as a central plot point without making it a hackneyed cliche.
The supernatural villain is genuinely scary and the human villains suitably nasty and cowardly. It's a pleasure to read of the gradual thinning of their ranks.
The story takes a few unexpected twists and turns, and with 10 pages to go, I had no idea if good was going to win over evil.
Apparently this is book number 1 in a 6 book series. I have one other in my TBR. I will certainly be tracking down the others.
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