These days, blood suckers are everywhere in popular culture – you’ll see vampires, zombies, and werewolves on the tube, in films, and in comics.  One of the most popular horror characters of all time is Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula and critically acclaimed novelist Kim Newman, takes the Count into an alternate universe where Van Helsing and friends failed to kill the famous vampire.  As a result, Dracula eventually takes over England, where vampires become part of the society at large.

Dracula Cha Cha Cha is the third book in the Anno Dracula series (Anno Dracula & Anno Dracula:  The Bloody Red Baron) and the setting is 1959 Italy, where Count Dracula is to wed the Princess of Moldavia Asa Vajda in Fregene, Italy.  Journalist Kate Reed intended to visit old “friends” Charles Beauregard and Genevieve Dieudonne in Rome, but gets wrap up in a murder mystery with secret agent Hamish Bond, where vampire elders are being murdered.  And the like the Anno books before it, Kim Newman is known for using historical settings of the time to move the plot, and the characters meeting famous historical people and popular fictional characters from that era.  The book has an added bonus short story – Aquarius with protagonist Kate Reed trying to solve 2 murders in London 1968. Journalist Kate plays detective and meets an enemy from the past.  And I liked the fact that there is also a chapter of Annotations explaining various references in the story.  If Twilight films are not your cup of tea, then you should definitely pick-up this bloody vampire book and may I also suggest reading Kim Newman’s first book Anno Dracula.

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Paperback:  Anno Dracula – Dracula Cha Cha Cha

Author:  Kim Newman

Publisher:  Titan Books

MSRP:  $14.95USD

Available:  October 26, 2012