Marks, John. Fangland. New York, Penguin Press, 2007. ISBN 9781594201172
Evangeline Harker, an associate producer on a popular television news magazine, The Hour, is sent to Romania rather against her will as she is planning to get married. There she is to meet one Ion Torgu, a notorious crime boss who has decided to tell his story. This trip turns out to be the stuff of nightmares filled with hotels that have seen better days, echoes of the Ceausescu era in buildings and places, a strange American missionary woman – or is she? – who wants to help and Torgu himself, an odd, difficult man who surrounds himself with relics of destroyed places and mutters a litany of names of battlefields and massacres. Alone with him, except for some dubious servants even he warns her about, in a run-down hotel in the middle of nowhere which he owns, she soon discovers he has an agenda of his own to remove to America.
In the meantime, her colleagues at The Hour become concerned that she has been gone so long. A search is instigated but something, some force seems to have infiltrated the offices of the news program, especially after some large crates come from Romania addressed to one of the correspondents. People start muttering the names of scenes of mass murder, some commit suicide, others become victims of a strange wasting disease and a peculiar bug appears to have infected the sound system as every interview or story has a curious hissing which sounds like place names being recited. Nothing has prepared these people in their world of image and network politics for what is happening and the danger fails even to register.
This novel has been described as Dracula rewritten for the 21st century. That doesn't really do it justice. Only the bare frame of Bram Stoker's Dracula novel has been used: a supernatural resident of Transylvania inveigles a young person from the "west" to visit him in order to effect his own transferral to a "newer" modern country whose citizens are ignorant of the danger they are in. One of the protagonists is called "Harker" and the story is assembled from diaries, personal accounts and correspondence (e-mail). Everything else is wholly original.
Just as the Bram Stoker novel played on the fears and concerns of the late 19th century, so this plays on those of the 21st century: loss of identity, the way the media shapes our perception of the world and above all, the long shadow of the various holocausts of the 20th century and beyond, up to and including the attack on the World Trade Centre. Indeed, The Hour's offices are right next to the crater in lower Manhattan. However, as Evangeline realises, the whole Earth is a charnel house – there is not one place on it where blood has not been shed by humans at some point over the millennia.
Romania, particularly Transylvania, is beautifully evoked as it is now, beautiful but still bearing the scars of Ceauşescu with dilapidated places once patronized by the Communist elite and ugly spots of polluting industry (such as Ploeşti). The once splendid hotels which for most visitors retain an air of slightly seedy charm (like some of the grand Victorian hotels at English seaside resorts) here become sinister places where the past is trapped. But underneath it all, "Transylvania" is not really the villain. Torgu is not Romanian (as he is quick to point out on a couple of occasions), his servants are Greek and what he represents is universal. Other types of villainy, many peculiar to late 20th century/21st century corporate society, are found among the American characters.
Evangeline is a complex character who starts off as a self-centred rather shallow and naïve woman; she fails to see any significance in the fact that Torgu's servants are called "Vourkulakis" and hail from the island of Santorini, and is more concerned that his appearance and manner make him an unsuitable subject for The Hour's audiences. She then undergoes a series of horrific experiences that bring out her strength, determination and resourcefulness despite the fact she, too, has become "infected"; she is both a heroine and murderess.
Although there is a certain amount of satire of television broadcast news and the mentality of those who work in that field, these characters are not puppets but are properly fleshed out. This only makes the medium's obsession with image and little else the more chilling.
However, the most chilling character is Torgu. Ugly and odd, he manages to be both threatening and charming in his dealings with Evangeline. However, about him hangs a charnel house atmosphere and he literally drags a shadowy army of the dead about with him. In many ways he is as much a victim as anyone, aware of his "burden", the result of his long dead father's curse; but this does not make him any less terrible. He is the author and centre of an insidious, creeping evil and his blood fetish calls to mind that form of necromancy which requires the blood of a living victim to make the dead speak.
Novels about vampires that are intelligently written and genuinely creepy are rare. This one also offers some very black humor, provides a sharp look at the media, and plays upon the horror of the human race's bloody past.
