THE SECRET LIFE OF LASZLO, COUNT DRACULA
by RODERICK ANSCOMBE
Shane KP O Neills
This was a difficult book to review. I was obviously drawn to the
title of this book, but confess it has spent quite a few
years on my book shelf gathering dust. There are many
pluses and minuses to this piece of work, so I’ll work
through them the best I can.
Firstly, at face value this was an exciting-looking
Gothic horror novel, and I’m sure it was meant to
look as such. Gothic it certainly is, which is a plus for
me, but a horror it is not. That was an immediate
disappointment that became apparent after only an
hour or two of reading.
In spite of that, and this book not being what I
anticipated it to be, I read on. I loved the 19th Century
setting of this book and especially the archaic writing
style of Mr Anscombe. That was the real highlight of
this work and he has a skill that cannot be disputed.
As for the story itself, though I hate to give anything
away in a review, I will say this. I did not feel anything
positive for the lead character at all. He was dark, and
certainly evil, but impossible to like in any way. All I
could feel was sympathy for those he came into
contact with and by that, I mean all of them. He selfloathed himself throughout and claimed in his journal
he wanted to be caught, yet he still allowed one hapless
soul after another to take the fall for him. This
culminated with the very nasty, but very clever finish
to the book where he remained true to form. The
biggest disappointment is that he never got what he
deserved, but perhaps that is a credit to the author in
making me feel that way.
There was one fatal error in the story. An entry in his journal for April, 1888 gave mention to a conversation at the
dinner table where it was suggested the killer might be another Jack the Ripper. The Whitechapel murders attributed
to Jack the Ripper began around four months later.
Another real drawback for me was the amount of errors in grammar and spelling. If this were a self-published book,
I could accept that, but for a book published by Bloomsbury, to have over twenty such errors, some of them
repeated, is very poor indeed. I give this 3 out 5, mainly for the quality of Mr Anscombe’s excellent writing style.
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