Judgment of Tears
Review by The Mad Bibliographer, submitted on 18-Nov-1998

A version of this review will appear in _The Vampire's Crypt_ 19 (Spring 1999). The Vampire's Crypt web site is: http://members.aol.com/MLCVamp/vampcrpt.htm

Kim Newman. Judgment of Tears: Anno Dracula 1959. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1998; ISBN 0-7867-0558-2; $22.95.

Kim Newman has done it again. In _Anno-Dracula_, Dracula's role as Queen Victoria's prince consort precipitated a social revolution, in which vampirism became a real, often preferred alternative, to being warm; in _The Bloody Red Baron_ Dracula, having been ousted from England, commanded the armies of Germany and Austro-Hungary in World War I. Now occupying the Palazzo Otranto in Italy, Dracula has created a stir among vampires and the warm alike by his plan to marry elder vampire Asa Vajda, Princess of Moldavia -- a political union that could have widespread repercussions, particularly in modern Romania.

Where there are potential political repercussions, there are always spies; in this case a vampire named Bond, Hamish Bond, acting on behalf of British Intelligence. An important part of his mission is consulting retired intelligence agent Charles Beauregard, who opposed Dracula during that vampire's de facto reign in England. Beauregard, although warm, has lived beyond the normal human lifespan through the intervention of Genevieve Dieudonne. The elder vampire lives with him, acting as something of a caretaker, still hoping against hope that he will consent to become a vampire so she will not lose him.

Kate Reed, a vampire journalist who goes back to Dracula's time in England, has come to Rome to sit at Charles's deathbed. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time, however, puts Kate into investigative journalist mode despite herself. A mysterious, costumed warm man has been killing vampires in Rome -- but only elders. The Crimson Executioner, as he is nicknamed, leaves Kate unharmed even as he destroys two older vampires literally before her eyes -- and before the eyes of a child, a little girl who seems tied to the killings. But how could she be?

Trying to answer that question leads Kate into strange places and circumstances: through the no-man's-land of I Cessati Spiriti, dead souls, where the living dead shamble and devour; to Dracula's Engagement Ball, attended by a veritable who's who of the undead; even to the subterranean passages of the Palazzo Otranto, where Dracula's own blood is shed in circumstances more bizarre than anything the Crimson Executioner has accomplished. But the end of the trail lies not with Dracula but with someone, some*thing*, even older and more powerful: the Mater Lachrymarum, the Mother of Tears, the mother of Rome, a genius loci jealous of her city. Kate, the gentle elder Genevieve, the endlessly manipulative Penelope Churchward, and even Hamish Bond - -- the ancient Mater's power draws them all into her snare.

As with the two previous Anno Dracula books, _Judgment of Tears_ boasts the double richness of plot and allusion. The characters and events are a delightful brew of historical and literary. Hamish Bond faces foes shamelessly lifted from cinema; Newman not only presents Stoker's _Dracula_ as an "imaginary history" but includes a brief disquisition on that genre as part of his narrative. And the "Dracula Cha Cha Cha" recurs from time to time, almost as a leitmotif. Even with no other redeeming features, _Judgment of Tears_ would be a delightful intellectual exercise.

It is, however, so much more. Charles and the three vampire ladies from his past -- Penelope Churchward, Kate Reed, and Genevieve Dieudonne -- form something approaching a romantic quadrangle, and the ladies' reactions to Charles's impending death manage to be more than just a recycling of vampire fiction motifs. Hamish Bond and Kate, on their separate adventures, encounter foes as dangerous and scenes as surreal as anything in a James Bond movie or a Fellini film. Even if you see through some (or all!) of the Mater's several faces, plenty of suspense remains as Kate deals with a new perspective on how to be a vampire while trying to learn who is killing the old vampires of Rome. And no more incongruous pair than gentle Genevieve and hard-edged Penelope could define the boundaries of a book.

Perhaps most notable is that Newman doesn't set up Penelope as a villain as such; she has "bad girl" characteristics, but her acute sensibilities at times make her almost heroic -- or at least thought-provoking. Dracula's household and the real Dracula that Penelope ultimately reveals underline the book's epigraph: "It is time for our culture to abandon Dracula and pass beyond him" (a quote from "Burying the Undead" by Robin Wood). And the final scene -- three friends, beyond not only girlhood but the normal human lifespan, playing tag on the beach - -- is a succinct and graceful expression of what all three Anno Dracula books are *about*; a dear and vital underlying playfulness that reaches beyond individual differences and perhaps beyond history itself, smoothing incongruous elements into unforced and even joyous tableaux.