Dracula Cha Cha Cha

Last updated

Dracula Cha Cha Cha
Dracula Cha Cha Cha.jpg
First edition
Author Kim Newman
Country United States
LanguageEnglish
Series Anno Dracula series
Genre Alternate history, horror
Publisher Carroll & Graf
Publication date
1998
Media typePrint (hardcover and paperback)
Pages291 (paperback)
ISBN 0-380-73229-7
OCLC 42805587
Preceded by The Bloody Red Baron  
Followed byJohnny Alucard 

Anno Dracula: Dracula Cha Cha Cha (re-titled Judgment of Tears: Anno Dracula 1959 upon initial U.S. release) is an alternate history/horror novel by British writer Kim Newman. [1] [2] First published in 1998 by Carroll & Graf, it is the third book in the Anno Dracula series.

Contents

Plot

In 1959, several of the world's notable vampires gather in Rome for the wedding of Count Dracula. Nefarious schemes are afoot and being investigated by British Intelligence, the Diogenes Club, and several others, including a British spy on the trail of a sinister madman with a white cat.

Setting

The book is an alternate history novel set in a world where Van Helsing never killed Dracula. The version of Rome shown in the book is heavily influenced by Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini. As always in the series, the novel contains a number of characters from other fictional works, though due to copyright restrictions some are not named or are given aliases.

Some of these identity shifts are quite clear (such as the character of Commander Hamish Bond, based on James Bond, who has a fondness for martinis, drives an Aston Martin, carries a Walther PPK, has the Scots version of the name "James" for his name, and gets to say "the bitch is dead."), while some are more obscure (a Kansas football player named Kent, for example).

The novel's original title is inspired by Bruno Martino's song Dracula Cha Cha (1959) (La Voce del Padrone, 7 MQ 1271), which appears on the album I grandi successi di Bruno Martino (The Great Successes of Bruno Martino - 1959) (La Voce del Padrone, QELP 8012) and is performed onscreen in Vincente Minnelli's film Two Weeks in Another Town (1962).

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vampire literature</span> Speculative literary genre

Vampire literature covers the spectrum of literary work concerned principally with the subject of vampires. The literary vampire first appeared in 18th-century poetry, before becoming one of the stock figures of gothic fiction with the publication of Polidori's The Vampyre (1819), which was inspired by the life and legend of Lord Byron. Later influential works include the penny dreadful Varney the Vampire (1847); Sheridan Le Fanu's tale of a lesbian vampire, Carmilla (1872), and the most well known: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897). Some authors created a more "sympathetic vampire", with Varney being the first, and more recent examples such as Moto Hagio's series The Poe Clan (1972-1976) and Anne Rice's novel Interview with the Vampire (1976) proving influential.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kim Newman</span> English novelist (born 1959)

Kim James Newman is an English journalist, film critic and fiction writer. Recurring interests visible in his work include film history and horror fiction—both of which he attributes to seeing Tod Browning's Dracula at the age of eleven—and alternative fictional versions of history. He has won the Bram Stoker Award, the International Horror Guild Award, and the BSFA award.

<i>Anno Dracula</i> series Alternate history fantasy book series by Kim Newman

The Anno Dracula series by Kim Newman—named after Anno Dracula, the series' first novel—is a work of fantasy depicting an alternate history in which the heroes of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula fail to stop Count Dracula's conquest of Britain, resulting in a world where vampires are common and increasingly dominant in society. While Dracula is a central figure in the events of the series, he is a minor character in the books and usually appears in only a few climactic pages of each book. While many of the characters from Newman's Diogenes Club stories appear in the Anno Dracula novels, they are not the same as the ones in those stories, nor is the Diogenes Club itself the same.

Monsieur Zenith the Albino is an ambiguous villain created by writer Anthony Skene for the "Sexton Blake" series of detective pulp fiction.

<i>Bram Stokers Dracula</i> (1992 film) Film directed by Francis Ford Coppola

Bram Stoker's Dracula is a 1992 American horror film directed and produced by Francis Ford Coppola, based on the 1897 novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. It stars Gary Oldman as Count Dracula, Winona Ryder as Mina Harker, Anthony Hopkins as Professor Abraham Van Helsing, and Keanu Reeves as Jonathan Harker.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mina Harker</span> Fictional character

Wilhelmina "Mina" Harker is a fictional character and the main female character in Bram Stoker's 1897 Gothic horror novel Dracula.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Vampyre</span> 1819 short story by John William Polidori

"The Vampyre" is a short work of prose fiction written in 1819 by John William Polidori taken from the story Lord Byron told as part of a contest among Polidori, Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, and Percy Shelley. The same contest produced the novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. "The Vampyre" is often viewed as the progenitor of the romantic vampire genre of fantasy fiction. The work is described by Christopher Frayling as "the first story successfully to fuse the disparate elements of vampirism into a coherent literary genre."

Lord Ruthven is a fictional character. First appearing in print in 1819, in John William Polidori's "The Vampyre", he was one of the first vampires in English literature. The name Ruthven was taken from Lady Caroline Lamb's Glenarvon, where it was used as an unflattering parody of Lord Byron, while the character was based on Augustus Darvell from Byron's "Fragment of a Novel". "The Vampyre" was written privately, and published without Polidori's consent, with revisions to the story made by Polidori for an unpublished second edition showing that he planned to change the name from Ruthven to Strongmore. The initial popularity of "The Vampyre" led to the character appearing in many translations and adaptations, including plays and operas, and Ruthven has continued to appear in modern works.

Richard Jeperson is a fictional character created by British horror / fantasy author Kim Newman. He appears in many of Newman's short stories as both a central and background character, primarily within the Diogenes Club series; however, an alternative version of the character appears in the Anno Dracula series as well. He is the focal point of a collection of short stories entitled The Man from the Diogenes Club.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arthur Holmwood</span> Character in Bram Stokers novel Dracula

Arthur "Art" Holmwood is a fictional character in Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula.

<i>The Bloody Red Baron</i> 1995 novel by Kim Newman

Anno Dracula: The Bloody Red Baron, or simply The Bloody Red Baron, is a 1995 alternate history/horror novel by British author Kim Newman. It is the second book in the Anno Dracula series and takes place during the Great War, 30 years after the first novel.

<i>Anno Dracula</i> 1992 novel by Kim Newman

Anno Dracula is a 1992 novel by British writer Kim Newman, the first in the Anno Dracula series. It is an alternate history using 19th-century English historical settings and personalities, along with characters from popular fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Boccherini Quintet</span> Musical artist

The Boccherini Quintet was a string quintet founded in Rome in 1949 when two of its original members, Arturo Bonucci (cello) and Pina Carmirelli (violin), discovered and bought, in Paris, a complete collection of the first edition of Luigi Boccherini's 141 string quintets, and set about to promote this long neglected music. Since then, they performed all over Italy and Europe and in many parts of the world, including thirteen tours of North America.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bruno Martino</span> Musical artist

Bruno Martino was an Italian composer, singer, and pianist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">EMI Italiana</span>

EMI Italiana was a record label, an Italian offshoot of British Electric and Musical Industries, based in Milan. It was founded in 1931 as VCM and, in 1967, renamed EMI Italiana; it then became EMI Music Italy in 1997 and, finally, EMI Records Italy Srl in 2013, when it ceased to exist as an independent company and was acquired by Universal Music Group.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tony Renis</span> Musical artist

Elio Cesari, known by his stage name of Tony Renis, is an Italian singer, composer, music producer and film actor.

The Diogenes Club is a series of short stories by British horror author Kim Newman, featuring the supernatural adventures of the titular club, a secret wing of the British government established to deal with extraordinary threats to the realm.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Milly (actress)</span> Italian singer and actress

Carla Mignone, known by her stage name Milly, was an Italian singer, actress and cabaret performer.

Dracula is the title of several horror film series centered on Count Dracula, who is accidentally resurrected, bringing with him a plague of vampirism, and the ensuing efforts of the heroic Van Helsing family to stop him.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of horror films</span>

The history of horror films is one that was described by author Siegbert Solomon Prawer as difficult to read as a linear historical path, with the genre changing throughout the decades, based on the state of cinema, audience tastes and contemporary world events.

References

  1. "Book review of Dracula Cha Cha Cha by Kim Newman". sfbook.com. 22 October 2012. Retrieved 1 June 2023.
  2. Latham, Robert (9 March 2020). "Kim Newman's Dazzling Genre Multiverse". Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved 1 June 2023.