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.
Jeperson – among the first characters created by Newman in his early efforts at fiction – is a homage to many of the 'telefantasy' heroes present on British television during the late 1960s and early 1970s, including Jason King ( Department S / Jason King ), John Steed ( The Avengers ) and the Third Doctor ( Doctor Who ). As such, he shares many character traits with them – a flamboyant dress sense, upper-class tastes and sensibilities combined with a youthful appreciation of the 'trendy' aspects of 1970s culture, a chivalrous and patriotic nature, and a healthy disdain for most representations of establishment authority. The stories in which he appears also parody / homage these telefantasy shows, and frequently examine 1970s British culture and society through this lens. In the story "Swellhead", set in the 2000s, a character compares him to Austin Powers.
In these stories, the character acts as an investigator for the Diogenes Club (established in the Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle), a branch of Britain's intelligence and law-enforcement community existing outside of regular channels designed to investigate (and where necessary, put a stop to) psychic, paranormal and unusual phenomena. The character himself is unusually empathic to an explicitly paranormal level, possessing a keen sensitivity to both these phenomena and to the thoughts and feelings of others. Jeperson's background in the stories is the subject of much mystery and examination; a war orphan, he possesses no memories prior to 1945, where he was found by his adoptive father, Geoffrey Jeperson, in a Nazi death camp, possibly held as the subject of experiments into his psychic abilities. He was subsequently raised by his father within the Diogenes Club, replacing the occult investigation position held by Carnacki and eventually becoming the club's 'Most Valued Member'.
Jeperson frequently shares his adventures with two other operatives – Vanessa, an amnesiac Emma Peel-like agent whom Richard once saved from a demon-like creature that was possessing her, and Fred Regent, a police officer seconded to the employ of the Diogenes Club following an adventure against psychically-induced demon Nazis.
The following stories – all written by Newman – feature Jeperson in a central role. All appear in the Man From the Diogenes Club collection.
As well as the stories featured in The Man from the Diogenes Club, Jeperson also appears in:
Kim James Newman is an English journalist, film critic and fiction writer. He is interested in film history and horror fiction—both of which he attributes to seeing Tod Browning's Dracula at the age of eleven—and alternative history. He has won the Bram Stoker Award, the International Horror Guild Award and the BSFA award.
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.
Professor Abraham Van Helsing is a fictional character from the 1897 gothic horror novel Dracula written by Bram Stoker. Van Helsing is a Dutch polymath doctor with a wide range of interests and accomplishments, partly attested by the string of letters that follows his name: "MD, D.Ph., D.Litt., etc.", indicating a wealth of experience, education and expertise. He is a doctor, professor, lawyer, philosopher, scientist, and metaphysic. The character is best known through many adaptations of the story as a vampire slayer, monster hunter and the arch-nemesis of Count Dracula, and the prototypical and the archetypical parapsychologist in subsequent works of paranormal fiction. Some later works tell new stories about Van Helsing, while others, such as Dracula (2020) and I Woke Up A Vampire (2023) have characters that are his descendants.
The Diogenes Club is a fictional gentlemen's club created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and featured in several Sherlock Holmes stories, such as 1893's "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter". It seems to have been named after Diogenes the Cynic and was co-founded by Sherlock's indolent elder brother Mycroft Holmes.
Wilhelmina "Mina" Harker is a fictional character and the main female character in Bram Stoker's 1897 Gothic horror novel Dracula.
Monster Force is a 13-episode animated television series created in April 9, 1994 by Universal Cartoon Studios and Canadian studio Lacewood Productions. The story is set in approximately 2020 and centers on a group of teenagers who, with help of high tech weaponry, fight off against classic Universal Monsters and spiritual beings threatening humanity. Some of the crew have personal vendettas, while others fight for mankind out of a sense of altruism. The series aired in syndication alongside another Universal animated series, Exosquad. Universal Studios Home Entertainment released the first seven episodes to DVD on September 15, 2009.
Thomas Carnacki is a fictional occult detective created by English fantasy writer William Hope Hodgson. Carnacki was the protagonist of a series of six short stories published between 1910 and 1912 in The Idler magazine and The New Magazine.
Occult detective fiction is a subgenre of detective fiction that combines the tropes of the main genre with those of supernatural, fantasy and/or horror fiction. Unlike the traditional detective who investigates murder and other common crimes, the occult detective is employed in cases involving ghosts, demons, curses, magic, vampires, undead, monsters and other supernatural elements. Some occult detectives are portrayed as being psychic or in possession of other paranormal or magical powers.
The Princess Casamassima is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly in 1885 and 1886 and then as a book in 1886. It is the story of an intelligent but confused young London bookbinder, Hyacinth Robinson, who becomes involved in radical politics and a terrorist assassination plot. The book is unusual in the Jamesian canon for dealing with such a violent political subject. But it is often paired with another novel published by James in the same year, The Bostonians, which is also concerned with political issues, though in a much less tragic manner.
"A Study in Emerald" is a short story written by British fantasy and graphic novel author Neil Gaiman. The story is a Sherlock Holmes pastiche transferred to the Cthulhu Mythos universe of horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. Gaiman describes it as "Lovecraft/Holmes fan fiction". It won the 2004 Hugo Award for Best Short Story. The title is a reference to the Sherlock Holmes novel A Study in Scarlet.
Arthur "Art" Holmwood is a fictional character in Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula.
The Golem is the name of a number of fictional characters appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. These include:
The character of Count Dracula from the 1897 novel Dracula by Bram Stoker, has remained popular over the years, and many forms of media have adopted the character in various forms. In their book Dracula in Visual Media, authors John Edgar Browning and Caroline Joan S. Picart declared that no other horror character or vampire has been emulated more times than Count Dracula. Most variations of Dracula across film, comics, television and documentaries predominantly explore the character of Dracula as he was first portrayed in film, with only a few adapting Stoker's original narrative more closely. These including borrowing the look of Count Dracula in both the Universal's series of Dracula and Hammer's series of Dracula, including include the characters clothing, mannerisms, physical features hair style and his motivations such as wanting to be in a home away from Europe.
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.
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.
Anno Dracula: Dracula Cha Cha Cha is an alternate history/horror novel by British writer Kim Newman. First published in 1998 by Carroll & Graf, it is the third book in the Anno Dracula series.
Massimo Polidoro is an Italian psychologist, writer, journalist, television personality, and co-founder and executive director of the Italian Committee for the Investigation of Claims of the Pseudosciences (CICAP).
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.
Dracula is a British horror film series produced by Hammer Film Productions. The films are centered on Count Dracula, bringing with him a plague of vampirism, and the ensuing efforts of the heroic Van Helsing family to stop him. The original series of films consisted of nine installments, which starred iconic horror actors Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing as Count Dracula and Doctor Van Helsing, respectively. The series is part of the larger Hammer horror oeuvre.
The history of horror films 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.