Stoker’s Wilde

“Morbid and fascinating” is how a character aptly sums up the events of this entertaining supernatural mash-up. Employing the entwined lives of Oscar Wilde and Bram Stoker as a springboard, Hopstaken and Prusi weave their weird tale from imagined occult experiences that might have influenced the 19th-century authors to write, respectively, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Dracula. This includes their efforts to thwart a decadent splinter sect of the Order of the Golden Dawn, obsessed with achieving immortality, that has been transformed into a horde of vampires infiltrating London under the guidance of the nefarious Black Bishop. The novel is briskly paced, owing in part to its fast-cutting epistolary format, and the authors enliven the plot by introducing characters who clearly anticipate those who will appear in Stoker and Wilde’s tales, as well as real-life celebrities including Ellen Terry, Lillie Langtry, and Sir Richard Burton. Hopstaken and Prusi have done their homework and produced a pleasing period penny dreadful. (May)