Harry is a necroscope, a man who can communicate with the dead, a skill which could surely prove useful in an espionage context. During the Cold War, a man called Harry Keogh is recruited by the British secret service due to his unusual talent. For me, this made the novel deeply satisfying, even though the story was clearly nowhere near finished after I’d turned the last page. Necroscope takes its time to build up tension, allowing its narrative to gradually unfold, its characters to become three-dimensional and intriguing. It created a sense of mystery not dissimilar to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, in which the vampire is a menacing threat rather than the omnipresent main character. There’s action, and gore, but not enough to satisfy those who like their horror quick and dirty. Clearly intended as the first instalment in a much longer series, much of Necroscope is exposition and world building. To the current-day reader, so used to instant Netflixified gratification, the novel may also appear to progress very slowly. After all, this is a story about vampires, so its claims to realism were always going to be shaky at best. These scenes are few and far between, however, and while I’m glad that society has since moved on it didn’t bother me much. Women play no part in the narrative to speak of, and where they do appear, they are described as objectified nymphomaniacs to the point where the story becomes unintentionally hilarious. Not only was I one of the lucky ones simply by virtue of being able to get a copy in the first place, I also got one with a beautiful George Underwood cover, in itself gorgeous enough to make my purchase worthwhile, even if the book would have turned out to be underwhelming after all my trouble.įortunately, though, it wasn’t. Like many forgotten novels, Necroscope is contantly in or out of print, and while I managed to snap up a copy, some others who tried in the same week didn’t.

I just had to get my hands on the first novel in the series and see for myself. When it was mentioned in a tweet by the excellent Kendall Reviews, its combination of Cold War spy novel, supernatural mayhem and vampirism sounded right up my street. Not that long ago, yet I had never heard of the series. First published in 1986, the novel went on to spawn seventeen more novels, the most recent one published in 2013. One such story is Necroscope by Brian Lumley. Or, perhaps, to devour unsuspecting readers first. For every boring, unimaginative Twilight rip-off, there’s a lesser-known gem lurking in the darkness somewhere, waiting to be devoured. Although vampires have become a cliché to the point that they seem to have lost much of their ability to scare, I still can’t resist a good vampire story.

Necroscope by brian lumley