The Curse of Dracula

When spooks have a midnight jamboree, 
They break it up with fiendish glee. 
Now, ghosts are bad, but the one that's cursed
Is the Headless Horseman, he's the worst

—Brom Bones, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949)

In my last Holmesian review, I chastised Loren D. Estleman for using the plot device of killing Holmes off for a few pages before bringing him right back, an overused plot device in the realm of Holmesian pastiches. I advocated for more creativity from pastiche writers. And I definitely got that from David Stuart Davies in The Tangled Skein. The problem is, I’m still not sure whether I enjoyed the book or not. One minute I’ll love it, and the next minute it will have me more irritated than an English prof who thinks Edgar Allan Poe was a time-travelling postmodernist. (I’m not even making that up, but that’s a story for another day.)

The Tangled Skein is a really clever sequel to The Hound of the Baskervilles. You will recall that Sherlock Holmes’ body was never recovered after the incident at the Reichenbach Falls. Well, the body of the guilty party in The Hound of the Baskervilles was also never recovered. And Sherlock Holmes discovers that this party is alive and very much well… and seeking revenge on Holmes for having foiled his plans.

The Adventure of the Sanguinary Count

I was never much of a fan of the idea of Sherlock Holmes meeting Count Dracula. The only thing they really have in common is that they were both popular characters written at around the same time period. Apart from that there’s nothing. They inhabit separate universes. Holmes is the ever-rational man who discounts all supernatural explanations as a matter of course, while the
world of Dracula is one of terror and superstition.

But somehow, Holmes vs. Dracula became a thing. There are plenty of takes on this throughout Holmesiana, and a quick Google search of “Holmes vs. Dracula” will turn up dozens of stories. And today I’m reviewing one of the very earliest – if not the first – examples of this kind of novel, Loren D. Estleman’s Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula.

Are You Afraid of the Dark?

Dracula is one of those immortal stories that pretty much any intelligent person knows, even if they haven’t read the story themselves. It’s right up there with Hamlet, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and A Christmas Carol. I had read Dracula before, but for reasons I will clarify in a moment, I wanted to revisit the classic novel.

So, here’s a really brief overview of the story for anyone who doesn’t know it: Dracula is an evil vampire who leaves his native land of Transylvania to come to England. He wreaks havoc there, draining the blood of a young woman without being suspected… that is, until someone calls in Dr. Abraham Van Helsing, who realises that Dracula is behind it all.