Author: Peter Haining ' Peter Tremayne
Publisher: Constable, London
Isbn: 0-09-475430

Marking the centenary of Bram Stoker's Dracula, this is not a psychological portrait of the creator of the legend, but an investigation of his background and the facts behind the novel. Haining and Tremayne's extensive research unearths new information, fascinating connections and tenuous links, although Haining's long history of writing compendiums of heavily-fictionalised "true" supernatural tales makes one wonder how trustworthy this is. Their documentation incorporates some gratifyingly weird anecdotes as well as one or two seemingly irrelevant digressions into loops of biographical detail.

What emerges is the importance of Stoker's Irish descent in the making of Dracula - the folk tales of Stoker's youth, his adolescence in freak-haunted, mistwreathed Dublin, literary connections from Maturin to Wilde. Of interest is the idea that Irish folklore had a strong influence on the Dracula Myth. The authors cite various legends to back this up: tales of bloodsucking demons such as droch fhota pronounced "drok-ola" and meaning "bad blood" - the fairy fortress of Dun DreachFhola, inhabited by blood-sucking undead, the evil craft of metempsychosis, the fairy seductress Leahnah Shee and the sinister Celtic cheiftan Abhartach, who reappeared after death and sustained his vile corpse with the blood of the living.

Digressions aside, it's a pretty entertaining read with some good Gothic padding ghostly muggings, unclothed crones crashing genteel dinner parties and the miraculous coup de Fort of the discovery of The Undead, the original manuscript of Dracula, a century after its writing, in a trunk of dead rats in America.

The authors' detailed research, good references, leads and bibliography (complete with list of libraries) incite one to read Dracula for oneself or to track down the exact spot in London of Lucy's grisly demise.