The Golden

In 1860 the vampire elite gathers at Castle Banat, deep in the Carpathian mountains. They are there for The Decanting, a ceremony in which a chosen few will drink the blood of The Golden, a virgin specially bred to produce an intoxicating, subtle vintage.

OK, this sound like the setup for a 1970's Eurotrash horror film, but Shepard's tale is in my limited reading the best vampire novel since Dracula. His vampires are the traditional variety susceptible to sunlight, fire, and wooden stakes, but the society he creates for them is complex, grotesques, and always entertaining.When The Golden is found murdered, drained of blood and savagely mauled, Michel Beheim, a vampire that was once the Parisian Chief of Police, is put on the case.

One of the many genres Shepard plays with is the conventional English country house mystery, although Castle Banat is an architectural marvel that makes Gormenghast seem like a weekend getaway. It is a multi-story, multi-dimensional edifice that accomodates not only The Patriarch and the convocation of vampires, but over the centuries has become the home of a society of those who once served vampires but never made the cut to become full-fledged members of the family. These debased beings live like rats in the walls, but as is often the case with servants, they know more about what's going on than do their masters. Beheim's junior status among the aristocratic vampires also makes The Golden a coming-of-age novel. As Beheim is warned early on, he has much to learn.

Shepard's language is a balancing act of realistic narrative and purple prose. The vampires engage in decadent, sophisticated banter that is part Noel Coward and part Marquis de Sade. The violent passages are graphic and it turns out that vampires like to have a lot of sex, both with one another and their servants. Shepard writes excellent prolonged sex scenes that might be laughable if looked at a second time but fit neatly into his story.

Shepard reels off similes, metaphors, and over-the-top descriptions that seldom flag or weigh down the narrative. The only passage that falls flat is Beheim's trip into The Mysteries, an episode that reads like a ride through a carnival spook house, although admittedly one with excellent special effects.

Beheim endures a very long night packed with incidents that are at times erotic, suspenseful, repulsive, or majestic. By its conclusion readers find themselves, Like its hero, shaken, disheveled, and dealing with a world that has been irremediably transformed.