As I mentioned in my review, I really enjoyed Vivian Shaw’s Strange Practice, the first in a series of novels following Dr. Greta Helsing, a physician to the undead. I flew through it so quickly that I pretty much immediately went out and bought the rest of the series, the second of which is Dreadful Company.
This installment sees Greta leaving London and visiting Paris for a medical conference, accompanied by her vampiric friend Lord Edmund Ruthven. Greta comes to the attention of a previous acquaintance of Ruthven’s, who ends up kidnapping and imprisoning her, essentially as bait to draw him out. Further complicating matters is the mysterious appearance of many small, benign monsters, who seem to be drawn to Greta, as well as multiple unexpected hauntings taking place in the city.
Along with Greta and Ruthven, several secondary characters from the first novel return. Sir Francis Varney expands his role in this one, with his crush on Greta being very endearing (without overwhelming the plot), and his attempts to integrate into modern society being a source of much amusement (he’d been in sort of a vampyric hibernation state for the past few decades). There’s some new allies—the excellently named Crepusculus Dammerung and Gervase Brightside, psychopomps investigating the hauntings, a demon who’d rather be a patisserie chef, and a werewolf who’d rather be a writer.
My main complaint about the first book was that the overall mystery wasn’t super compelling (when the main “villain” is a disembodied entity, it’s hard to care), but this one absolutely improves in that regard. The vampire coven that kidnaps Greta is both terrifying and hilarious in equal measure. Their leader is obsessed with looking and acting like a “stereotypical” vampire, by which he employs methods such as hair dye and copious amounts of body glitter.
I read this just as quickly as the first one, and enjoyed it even more. I’m looking forward to reading the final two books in the series!