Firstly, I picked this book to read because I saw two of the characters had the names of Mina and Lucy, with Lucy struck down by a mysterious illness. Then the book flap mentioned “terrible, ancient truths” and “an evil beyond comprehension.” and I read between the lines and thought that this was going to be some kind of Dracula situation. And I am here for various takes on Dracula. And this book is that! But it is also its own thing, borrowing some names, general character archetypes, and plot points and spinning things into something new.
In The Madness we have Mina Murray a psychiatrist working out of London, having ditched her life in Wales when she was a teenager. She is estranged from her life there, including her former Best Friend Lucy, her ex-boyfriend Jonathan Harker, and her mother who is a kind of village witch. Lucy has no use for her mother’s superstitions and is a woman of rationality and science. She is also dealing with a lot of trauma (this trauma being why she fled to London), and dealing with her OCD. She gets pulled back to her home when she receives an email from Lucy asking for help because Lucy is sick and what is making her so ill is a mystery. At the same time, Mina has a patient who is showing many of the same symptoms, with a side of umm, eating flies. The book goes from there, delving into what is making Lucy sick, and how that ties into Mina’s patient Renee, and other women who have shown similar symptoms before going missing, and then ending up dead.
But I want to be clear while there are echoes of Dracula in here, and yes vampires are the antagonists, this is not a straight-up modern version of Dracula, one where the characters exchange emails and text messages as opposed to letters and telegrams. Some familiar names show up, such as Mina’s ex being named Jonathan Harker, her colleague is Dr. John Seward, Lucy is married to Arthur Holmwood, and her ex is an American from Texas. But there are tweaks, for example, Lucy’s ex is Quince Morris, a female American from Texas, Jonathan is not a lawyer, and Mina is the driving narrative force behind this story.
While Mina has a complicated past with this version of Jonathan Harker, that character is not that fleshed out. He’s there to serve Mina’s narrative, and that is fine. He’s her ex, but I was more invested in Mina and Lucy’s friendship, as Mina’s drive to save her friend and solve the mystery of her illness, pushes the plot forward. I liked that Mina, her mother, Quince, and the novel version of Abraham Van Helsing were all women and that the male characters were just – kind of there. The women are running this show, and they are doing it to save other women in peril. She’s Mina, and Jonathan is just Ken.
I liked this take on vampires, I found the symptoms the victims portrayed to be described in a very .. disgusting creepy and effective way. I also thought that the book handled how these modern vampires would select their victims in a mostly believable way.
I found this to be a very fast read, the plot hits the ground running and does not let up. As the novel is told from Mina’s point of view I feel we got to know her the best, and as mentioned the male characters were a little underbaked. I also am a bit of a horror nerd and wanted more about how vampires work in this setting than I got. Those nitpicks didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the novel, and I really want to stress this is Dracula-like. A couple of things caught me off guard in a good way, and while a few things felt almost predestined because it’s Dracula I thought they still worked and were effective.
One thing while reading this book, it triggered my desire to scream “It’s vampires!” at the characters. I understand that this isn’t a self-aware horror novel, while there is folklore referenced, the characters aren’t watching movies to figure out the rules of vampires, but yeah when dealing with the symptoms of the mysterious illness, I did keep muttering to myself that it was so obviously vampires.