The Edge Online - Reviews: Simon Clark

Vampyrrhic
Simon Clark

Hodder & Stoughton, hardback, 441 pages, £16.99

Review by David Clark (1998)

Vampyrrhic, the fifth novel by one of Britain’s best-selling horror writers, sees him turning to Bram Stoker, Nosferatu and the like for the sourcing of his latest post-modern horror. Clark remixed plenty of stock SF tropes in previous novels, so now it must be time for horror cliché to become more prominent. SF elements are still present, however: our homely townsfolk are affected by a medical condition that renders them comatose. The medicine for this, of course, is blood. And vengeance.

It’s a small scale disaster this time, with the carnage confined to Leppington, a small town on the Yorkshire moors; near Whitby, you won’t be surprised to learn. The place is evoked in grim fashion: during the Industrial Revolution it was virtually one big slaughterhouse. Then there are the local legends: ancient gravestones show swordsmen fighting, riding and even mating with she-monsters and there’s also the whip-wielding 7th century nun who beheaded the local snakes, back when the place I (unlike Vampyrrhic’s Doctor David Leppington) will not be visiting on my holidays was infested with blood-drinking demons. There’s a strong Norse element to the legends, as there should be, in a book of this kind set in the north of England.

When Bernice Mochardi and David Leppington (that isn’t a typo, the character takes his family name from the town) hit town things get going. In the here and now, there are things moving underground (there are things, but no rats, in Leppington), a sprinkling of gore, decapitation by means of chainsaw, strong characters and well-constructed thriller elements, and brutal vampirism; none of that smooth blood-sucking here. And plenty more. And while these things aren’t new, Clark has an original spin on them.

Vampyrrhic’s horror is generally of the sort that leaves me feeling bloated and queasy, full of the kind of feeling you get when you’ve eaten too many chips, only sort of northern as well. Vampyrrhic, bloody, and full of history, is set in the north of England and nowhere else, and it’s grim up there. Clark knows how to create an atmosphere, just as he knows how to do character. Vampyrrhic is done well, it resonates. One might point out the debt he owes Ramsey Campbell. If that’s a flaw (and I don’t think it is), the only other is one it also shares with Clark’s other novels (and many of Campbell’s): it’s a bit too long, too padded; some economy would have been welcome.

Like those other books by Clark and Campbell, Vampyrrhic could make a great British horror movie (after some tidying and tweaking), a sort of updated, credible version of something from Hammer. For a horror novel, it’s class.