The term ‘Art Deco’ didn’t get much use until the 1960s, but its origins are usually traced to the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Art Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris, so the UK Art Deco Society will be celebrating with an art deco ball at the end of March. I do hope there will be tango.
As with all cultural movements, the first stirrings of art deco were clearly visible before the world noticed it in 1925. The earliest years of the 20th century were a time of dramatic cultural change. France was in the vanguard of new ideas. These encompassed not only art and design but areas like music and fashion.
Tango predates this, of course. Although its roots go further back, aficionados consider that it became a clearly defined art with the composition of music like El talar in 1895and El entrerriano in 1897. Back then it was still considered a vaguely disreputable dance from the bordellos and slums of Buenos Aires. By 1910, though, it had crossed the Atlantic and was taking France by storm. Soon after, it was everywhere. HG Wells called 1913 “the year of the tango”.
Tango dancers: Liz Usabal Y Herndandez 1913
While the original tango had been very much a dance of the working man, the people bringing tango to Paris were rich visitors from Buenos Aires. The baggy bombacha trousers gave way to smart suits and dinner jackets. Although the dance was denounced by the Pope and widely considered improper, it was defended by the poet, novelist, and dramatist, Jean Richepin, in a paper given to the Académie Française.
“We must see, in the current craze for Tango, only the revival of our tenacious love for dance, and rejoice in it.”
The popularity of tango grew, interrupted briefly by the inconvenience of the first world war, but there seemed no stopping it.
In America, Vernon and Irene Castle (huge dance stars at the time) were bastardising Argentine tango into ballroom tango, heading off complaints of impropriety by making the dancers keep their torsos farther apart. While they were at it, they also simplified both the steps and the music to make it easier to dance. The decadent Europeans, though, continued to dance outrageously close and film of dancers at that time shows scenes easily recognisable in dance clubs today.
The Art Deco style is reflected in the signage outside this Warsaw tango club in 1936.
Posters from the period are still popular and still in copyright, so I’m not adding any examples. The UK Art Deco Society’s flyer for its Centenary tea dance gives you an idea though.
A Word from our Sponsor
I love tango. By a fortunate coincidence, the vampire hero of my Galbraith & Pole books loves tango too. I wrote a free short story for Valentine’s Day, featuring Chief Inspector Pole and the tango of 1913. You can read it here:
It’s been a long time since I wrote a Galbraith & Pole book. I’ve been tied down with the next of my James Burke historical novels for almost a year, but it’s out there with beta readers now, so I’ve had time to think about my vampire policeman, Pole, and his human partner, Chief Inspector Galbraith.
I’m an old softie deep down, so I thought it would be nice to write a story for Valentine’s Day. It’s a bit darker than your usual Valentine tale, but then Pole is one of the Others, as the vampires call themselves, so what did you expect? And Pole being Pole, and me being me, there’s a lot of tango in it.
You don’t need to have read any of the Galbraith & Pole books to enjoy the story, though it would be nice if you had. (And if you have, and you haven’t left a review, could you please spread the Valentine love by reviewing them now.) There are buy links at the end of the post.
Enjoy!
Love, death, and tango.
It had been quiet week. Galbraith had taken the opportunity to spend an evening with Pole. It had been a while since he had sampled the vampire’s scotch and he thought he was overdue a companionable drink.
It had been an unusually cold February and he appreciated the cheerful warmth of a traditional open fire. It was a rare to find real flames flickering in a London flat these days and Galbraith enjoyed the novelty. There were advantages to a friend who had formed their habits of life hundreds of years ago and stayed with them when most people were more than happy with central heating.
He raised his glass. “Here’s to the cold weather. It keeps criminals home in the warm and gives us a quiet life.”
Pole returned his salute. “Life in what you still insist on thinking of as the supernatural world has been uneventful too. None of the Others have been taking illicit Mortal blood. No werewolves have been glimpsed prowling the Royal Parks. All is right with the world.” He gestured toward the leather bound volumes in his book case. “I may even take the opportunity to catch up on my reading.” He sipped at his whisky. “And it has been a while since I went out dancing.
“Ah, yes,” said Galbraith. “Tango.” He sat quietly for a while thinking about the dance. He’s been dancing more often since he had started going out with Jane Ellis. ‘Going out.’ It made him sound like a teenager and he hadn’t been a teenager for longer than he cared to think about. The idea made him chuckle.
Pole raised an eyebrow. “Something amusing?”
“I was thinking about tango.” Well, it was almost true. He hurried on before Pole asked anything else. His friend had an unnatural ability to know what he was thinking and he was not sure that he wanted to discuss his relationship with Ms Ellis. “How did you come to start dancing tango?”
Pole raised his glass but, instead of drinking, he sniffed it thoughtfully before setting it down untouched and leaning back in his armchair.
“It was a long time ago,” he said. “Not that long in terms of my life, but more than half a century before you were born.”
Galbraith said nothing. His friend, he knew, would tell the story in his own time.
“It was 1913. They called it ‘the year of the tango’. The dance had just been introduced to Europe by rich Argentinians doing the Grand Tour.” Galbraith must have looked quizzical because Pole raised an admonitory finger. “Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world back then. Their rich young men went to all the best places and wherever they went they took this dance. Such a scandal!” He smiled and Galbraith imagined him all those years ago, enjoying watching this shocking new dance. “The Pope condemned it. The Queen refused to allow it to be danced in her presence. It was, according to the papers, lascivious and lewd, bodies pressed together, legs intertwined. It presaged, they said, the end of civilisation and all that was pure and decent. Of course I had to see it.”
Pole began to describe the scene. His voice seemed to grow deeper and Galbraith found himself feeling drowsy, sitting there by the fire, the whisky warming his veins. He had seen this trick of Pole’s before, so he was hardly surprised when the vampire’s voice seemed to fade and he was there, in 1913, watching a room full of young people dancing tango. He smelt cigarette smoke and perfume.
The men were in suits or dinner jackets, bow ties askew as they danced. Galbraith had expected to see girls in flapper dresses with bobbed hair but the women in his vision were wearing Edwardian clothes. The dresses were well below mid-calf but gave the impression of being more daring by having shorter tops worn over longer layers. Biased hems revealed ankles and some skirts were split creating opportunities for the dancers to allow glimpses of calves as they span around their partners, legs flashing out in what Galbraith thought must have been considered very daring dance steps at the time.
The men’s clothes were respectable blacks and whites, but the women seemed to sport an extraordinary amount of orange. Their fabrics were not only brightly coloured but lightweight, almost gossamer, adding to the sense that Victorian standards had been well and truly abandoned. Their hair was not bobbed but it was worn short, elaborately curved or waved. Respectable hats had been virtually abandoned but feathers, turbans and fascinators were all the rage – nothing that would get in the way of dancing cheek to cheek with their partners.
The room was lit by a chandelier and the light sparkled off jewelled broaches and rhinestones sewn to seams. A live band – violins, a piano, a double bass, and the concertina-like bandoneon – played on a platform at one side of the room and the floor was filled with couples dancing, if not lasciviously, definitely very close together. Galbraith could see why the Pope was not amused.
Even in that sea of bright young things, one girl stood out. She was petite with a dress a daring inch or two shorter than most, her lips painted in a brilliant vermillion cupid’s bow. Her hair was chestnut brown and her green eyes held more than a hint of mischief.
As Galbraith watched, an older man approached her, took her in his arms and whirled her away across the room. To his astonishment, he recognised Pole. The vampire seemed somehow more youthful, although he had changed his appearance hardly at all.
The scene flickered for a moment and was gone.
“Her name was Madelaine,” said Pole, “and I was very taken with her.”
“You were in love.”
Pole made a small, dismissive gesture with the hand that was not holding his glass.
“We Others do not love as Mortals love. It is not that we don’t have a soul, or that we do not feel things as you do. But we are, by our nature, different. We will not have children together. We cannot watch each other grow old. We will live, not for ever, but for a very, very long time. But we are trapped in the life we had when we became what we are. Mortals change as their bodies change. They grow thicker in the waist and thinner in the hair. They become less impulsive and more thoughtful. And, as they change, so they and their true love change together, growing into each other’s shape. That, I think, is what true love is for Mortals. And we can never have that. We are almost changeless. If I were to say to a lover that we will be together until we die, that’s an unimaginably long time to live, unchanged, unyielding, day after endless day.”
Galbraith attempted a sympathetic nod, but he was not convinced. He had seen the way Pole looked at her as they danced. The vampire’s insistence that he had not been in love was no more convincing than that of any young man helplessly infatuated with a beautiful girl.
“In any event,” said Pole, “a few weeks after I met Madelaine, I found myself with more pressing concerns at these tango parties.”
Galbraith nodded and waited. As ever, Pole would not be hurried with his story.
“Several young men died in what the police at the time referred to as ‘mysterious circumstances’. Unfortunately, to those who knew of the existence of the Others, and our arrangement to preserve peace between the Others and Mortals, the circumstances were anything but mysterious. They were what alarmists insist on calling ‘vampire attacks’. The bodies were found drained of blood. They were ‘respectable’ young men …” (Pole’s tone suggested that he did not think they were respectable at all.) “By which I mean that they had money and that their deaths could not therefore be ignored by the authorities. I was called in to investigate.”
Pole had no official status with the police in those days. Section S had yet to come into existence, but, he said, it was not difficult to discover that all that the men had in common – besides that they were men and had money – was that they enjoyed the new craze for tango.
“More than that, they frequented the same clubs where I danced with Madelaine. In these circumstances, I felt that it was no less than my duty to attend as many of the dances as I could – purely, of course, to let me keep an eye out for any unusual activity.”
Galbraith could not resist a smile. “And if that meant you spending more time with Madelaine, that was a burden you felt you had to bear.”
Pole’s glance, Galbraith felt, could fairly be described as ‘icy’.
“Indeed. In fact, Madelaine’s presence was helpful because it explained my frequent attendance.” Pole’s expression suggested that any ironic comments from Galbraith would not be appreciated.
“After a week or two, I was dancing almost every night, but I never saw anything suspicious. The deaths continued and arrangements were made for me to see the bodies. I recognised most of them from the dances I had attended. I had, of course, seen many deaths over the centuries, but there was something strangely disturbing about these. I would have danced alongside them one night and viewed their bodies in the morgue the next morning. In many cases, I had seen them dancing with Madelaine, mere hours before their deaths. It was hardly surprising. I would dance only two or three turns in the evening with her – more would have been considered improper – and she was a popular girl. Even so, it was unsettling.”
Again, Pole’s voice deepened and Galbraith was back in 1913. It was a different club. The crowd looked more monied. There were more diamonds and rubies in the elaborate brooches. Smartly dressed staff circulated with drinks. He saw Pole dancing with a tall, thin girl whose hair was held in place with a headband which sported a yellow feather. Pole himself was wearing a smart dinner jacket. Galbraith was sure that Pole would have explained it as an effort to be inconspicuous among the rich men showing off their fine tailoring, but Galbraith saw Madelaine glance in Pole’s direction with apparent approval and Galbraith suspected that Madelaine’s approval had featured in Pole’s choice of wardrobe.
The music ended and Pole escorted his partner back to her seat before looking about to catch Madelaine’s eye. He was too late, though. A plump man, rather older than most of the crowd, had already claimed her for the next dance. Frustrated, Pole strolled towards the bar, and settled himself with a drink while he watched the dancers.
Galbraith heard Pole’s voice, as if from a great distance. “You must remember that these were simpler times. There were fewer records kept. People lived in villages that they never left. If they took it in their heads to come to live in London, they had by today’s standards, a remarkable lack of documentation. And the Others were less organised than today. I recognised a few of them at the club, but there may well have been more who were unknown to me. I am no more able to recognise my fellows than you are, although we share some characteristics that are a bit of a giveaway if I spend time with them. In the bustle of a dance club, though, it is not at all obvious. Afterwards, I blamed myself. I felt I should have realised, although I really cannot say how.”
The scene shifted. The club was gone and Pole was in a white-tiled room, looking down at a body lying on a table, covered by a sheet. Someone drew back the revealing the face of the older man who had been dancing with Madelaine. The pallor of the skin told him all he needed to know, even before the pathologist had explained that death had been caused by massive blood loss.
The vision faded and Galbraith found himself back in Pole’s flat. His friend looked, even for him, unnaturally pale, and he was making serious inroads into his Scotch.
“I asked about how the body had been found. Usually they were at home, sometimes in a drawing room, sometimes in bed. There were never signs of a struggle. It seemed reasonable to assume that they had been killed by somebody they had had no suspicions of. The fact that some were found in bed rather suggested a woman might have been involved, although it can be dangerous to make assumptions about these things. This gentleman – his name, I recall, was Padmore – had been found in a hotel. He was not the first to have been discovered in such an establishment. Usually they were small places, not overly concerned about the respectability of their guests. The staff had either never seen anyone accompanying the victims or they considered it wiser to claim ignorance. Mr Padmore was an exception. When I visited the hotel, I was able to interview a bellboy who said that he had seen the deceased enter the hotel accompanied by a young woman. I naturally enquired what the young woman looked like but the bellboy said that, discretion being the watchword of the establishment, he had not taken a good look at her. All he could say was that she had chestnut hair and was very pretty.”
He looked, Galbraith thought, suddenly much older.
“I should have known then, but there were lots of pretty girls dancing tango in those days. It could have been any of them.”
Pole continued to go out dancing and kept a special eye out for girls with chestnut hair. “Madelaine noticed, of course, and teased me horribly, but I saw nothing out of the ordinary. And then, one night, I was delayed – another case, involving an unfortunate incident in Soho, a place that well deserved its evil reputation in those days. Once I could get away, I decided to try to meet Madelaine anyway.” He took another pull at his Scotch. “She was leaving as I arrived. She was moving off away from the direction I was walking and she didn’t see me. She was hanging on the arm of a tall fellow I had noticed there the previous night: a silly looking sort of chap with a monocle.”
It had been over a hundred years ago, but Galbraith could still hear the jealous bitterness in his voice.
“I followed them. I told myself I was just doing my job, but I think I was angry and wanted to spy on her.” He paused, thinking back to that night. “They walked to a house in Fitzrovia and I watched them climb the front steps and vanish inside. After a few minutes I saw a light go on in an upper room. I confess it distressed me. In any case, there was nothing to be gained by staying there. I had lost any interest in dancing so I went home and worked for the night.”
There was a long silence. The two men sat there, watching the flames in the grate.
Eventually, Pole spoke again.
“The next evening, I received word of the latest death. A tall young man who lived in Fitzrovia. I asked if he wore a monocle and, of course, he did.”
Pole topped up his drink.
“I confronted her the next night. I asked if I could walk her home. I never had before, and she seemed really happy that I did then. When we arrived, I insisted on entering, although it was obviously beyond all the bounds of propriety. I felt, by then, that propriety could go hang.”
He took another drink before, with an almost visible effort, pressing on with the story.
“When I told her what I knew, she did not deny it. I had never told her of my condition, but she said she was not surprised. She had, she claimed, always felt a particular connection to me and she supposed that the fact that neither of us was Mortal explained it. She had been changed by somebody who had been killed shortly after, and she had made her own way in our world, without anybody to guide her. Without help, she gave in to her cravings. Now she was as dependent on fresh human blood as any addict is addicted to their drug of choice.”
Galbraith watched as he struggled with the memory of that night.
“I told her that I could help her. That I knew people who could control her behaviour. It was, as far as our kind was concerned, the beginning of the modern world. We had scientists, doctors and psychiatrists helping the Others away from their old ways into the position we have today where we can live quietly alongside Mortals. It’s a precarious balance but it lets us survive in a world that lacks the dark corners where we used to live. It can …” For a moment there was a flash of the usual urbane Pole, as he gestured around his flat. “It can be very comfortable.”
“We had a private hospital out in Surrey. It was quite an isolated spot in those days and there was a high wall to ensure privacy.”
Again, Galbraith found himself back in the past, watching Pole and Madelaine. They were walking in the grounds of a large house. It was a sunny day and banks of flowers made a brilliant showing in the garden but Madelaine seemed in no mood to enjoy it. She had lost weight and, in a respectable full-length skirt, she was barely recognisable as the vivacious young woman from the club. Her eyes were sunk in her face and she twitched nervously, her hands constantly pulling at her blouse. Pole was alongside her, talking gently. Galbraith could not hear what he was saying, but from time to time he would reach for her hand and she would take it for a minute or two, before snatching it away and once more fiddling with her clothes.
Pole’s voice filtered into the vision. “She found it hard there, away from the life she had built for herself in London, but I had no choice. She had to be kept locked away until she had learned to master her overpowering desire for blood. I visited as often as I could but I found there were increasing demands on my time. The international situation was deteriorating and the arrangement the Others had made with the Crown meant that I was often sent on missions into Europe as tensions built, and Britain and Germany started to spy out the land for the conflict we all knew was coming.”
The visions changed and Galbraith saw a kaleidoscope of images: Pole on a cross-channel steamer; an explosion in a munitions factory; Pole opening a safe in a darkened room.
“The irony was that it was such a beautiful summer. I even began to think that the treatment they were giving Madelaine might be starting to work. And then, suddenly we were at war.”
Galbraith saw Pole in uniform, his polished Sam Browne belt shining against the khaki jacket.
“I was officially a soldier but I spent little time in the trenches. I saw enough to realise how bad it was – almost as bad as our Civil War.” Pole’s face twitched. He never spoke of those days, but Galbraith knew that he had lived through the Civil War and the memory still haunted him. Now, though, Pole was remembering the more recent conflict. The images seemed to spill from Pole’s mind in an uncontrolled torrent. Galbraith saw the rats eating the bodies just out of reach in No Man’s Land. He heard the guns and the cries of the wounded. He smelt mud and blood and the stench of men crammed together with no proper latrines or ways to clean themselves. Then, mercifully, the visions stopped and he was back in Pole’s flat.
“My feelings for Madelaine seemed very petty in the midst of all that suffering and death. But, as soon as I could return to England on leave, I went to visit her again.”
Galbraith saw Pole, incongruous in his uniform, once again walking through the garden with Madelaine. It was Autumn and the leaves were turning brown. Madelaine did look better. She took his hand and smiled at him, but she was still painfully thin.
“They told me that I should spend time with her in her room. The psychiatrist there held very advanced views for the period.”
The vision continued and Galbraith was briefly concerned that he was playing the part of a voyeur in an intimate meeting, but he should not have been worried. Pole did remove the stiff Sam Browne belt and eventually discarded the jacket. What followed might have been considered risqué in 1914 but was, by 21st century standards, a very restrained display of affection.
“The hospital had been experimenting with alternatives to fresh blood and she had been finding it difficult to cope with these but, after we had sat together for a while, she said she felt so much better that she would try again to eat a plateful of the diet they were trying to wean her onto. I was happy that she was making the attempt, seemingly at least in part to please me. I went cheerfully to the kitchens and returned bearing a plate of some sort of blood meal. I admit I did not think it looked particularly appetising, but she made a valiant effort, eating about half of it. I left, convinced that I had been able to do some good.”
Pole was quiet for a while. It seemed to Galbraith that he was playing back in his head the scenes of that day but, if he was, these were not images that he was happy to share.
“I had almost reached the door when I felt that there was something wrong about the way my Sam Browne belt hung against my body. The holster was too light. I unbuttoned the flap and saw Madelaine’s hairbrush where my revolver should have been. She must have taken the weapon when she sent me to bring her the food.
I turned and ran back towards her room. I had almost reached it when I heard the shot.
She was lying on the bed, a coverlet across her body. One arm had fallen to the side. The other still held my revolver at her breast. She had shot herself through the heart. I could not see the wound but the blood was already soaking through the bedcover.”
There was a note, he said.
“It told me that she loved me but that she could not live with her condition. That I should go back to the war and forget about her. At the bottom, where she had signed her name, the ink was smudged as if a tear had dropped on it. Which, of course, is impossible, as we Others do not cry.”
Galbraith could think of nothing to say. The two friends sat in silence while they finished their drinks. When he got up to leave he thought, for a moment, that he glimpsed moisture in the vampire’s eyes, but then he told himself it was a trick of the light. Vampires, as Pole had said, do not cry.
He stepped out into the street, that February evening, and started home. He thought of Jane Ellis and Madelaine and lost chances and lost love. It was almost Valentine’s Day. He would ask her if she would go dancing with him.
The Galbraith and Pole books
There are three Galbraith & Pole books.
Something Wicked introduces Chief Inspector Pole when he assists Chief Inspector Galbraith in investigating the death of a peer of the realm and introduces him to tango. Vampires love tango, partly because it’s usually danced at night.
In Eat the Poor, Pole teams up with Galbraith again when a werewolf is roaming London. As the investigation moves to Westminster, politics starts to get bloody.
In Monsters in the Mist, the urbane Chief Inspector Pole and the very urban Galbraith are both out of their comfort zone investigating a savage killing on the hills of mid-Wales. Is it another werewolf, or something even more sinister?
Last week I reviewed Kirsten McKenzie’s latest: a thriller about very modern vampires running a property empire from the heart of New York.
I love books that put a twist on vampire stories to allow a vampire sub-culture to flourish. That’s the thinking behind my Galbraith & Pole series. This sees the urbane 21st century vampire, Pole, working alongside the very human Chief Inspector Galbraith to deal with crimes that involve the supernatural realm. Pole is anxious that these are solved quietly in case people turn on his kind, while Galbraith just wants to avoid the panic that would spread if the world at large knew of the monsters that walk among us.
As Galbraith gets to know Pole better, he comes to realise that Pole is not a monster, but a creature very like him, but with some specific dietary requirements and an unfortunate reaction to sunlight. Over the centuries, though, Pole and his kind have learned how to adapt to what they call the Mortal world and Pole tries very hard to live a decent life without killing people for their blood.
My vampires and those in McKenzie’s Vampires of York Tower both pass unnoticed in our world. Both have emotional lives as well and, though Pole is not prone to show his feelings, he does tend to get sentimental about tango.
“Ah, the tango.” They had passed out into the square by now and Pole cast his glance upward at the sky. Galbraith thought it looked as though he was gazing up towards the moon, but it was a cloudy night and above them was only the glow of the lights of London. “Tango is, I think, a point at which your world and ours converge. The music speaks of great beauty and unbearable sorrow; of love and of death. Humans and Others both find it touches them. And the dance hall provides a neutral territory – a safe place to meet.”
– Something Wicked
For Valentine’s Day this year, I’ve decided to show a little more of this side of my favourite vampire. Next Friday, my blog will be carrying a FREE short story, Love, Death, and Tango. It’s a stand-alone story but people who have not read any of the Galbraith & Pole books might enjoy reading Something Wicked first. And to make that easier, I will be giving it away free on Monday and Tuesday (10th and 11th). The remaining two Galbraith & Pole stories will be just 99p/99c on Kindle from Monday to Friday next week (10th to 14th).
Writers give their books away to generate interest in them. We hope people will enjoy the free book and read more of the series. And they hope people will review them.
I know reviewing can be a pain, but just a few lines makes a huge difference. When the Galbraith & Pole books first came out they got some very good reviews but, as time has passed, people have stopped reviewing them and this means that they no longer sell a lot. Unfortunately for Galbraith & Pole fans, I write historical fiction (the James Burke series) that sells rather better. That means that I am under some pressure to write more historical fiction and less Urban Fantasy. I like writing Urban Fantasy, but the sad truth is that it’s the historical fiction that sells.
In the end, what books get written is decided by readers. If you want to see more Urban Fantasy, please review the books you read. And if you enjoy Galbraith & Pole, please take advantage of the offer price to buy them. Thank you
There have been stories of vampires – or something very like vampires – for thousands of years. Modern ideas about vampires can be traced back to mediaeval times, with vampire myths being particularly popular in Eastern Europe. Vampires entered English fiction in the early 19th century, but really took off with the publication of Bram Stoker’s Dracula in 1897.
Given the long history of vampires and the different cultures that produced vampire stories, it’s hardly surprising that there are many different versions of the vampire myth. Since Dracula, though, there have been some recurring tropes. Vampires burn in daylight, they can be killed by fire, holy water, or a stake through the heart. They are driven off by garlic. They can take the form of bats or wolves. Not all the stories include all the attributes and, lately, writers have had fun in twisting and experimenting with the attributes of their vampires. My own vampire creation, Chief Inspector Pole, enjoys cooking with garlic and certainly can’t turn into a bat, but he is, if not immortal, very long lived and he needs to drink blood to stay healthy. These two attributes seem to be the bare minimum and almost all vampire stories stick with them.
Kirsten McKenzie’s vampires are very much in this modern tradition. They have lived hundreds of years and they have to feed on blood, but beyond that she has chosen to concentrate on some mythic elements of vampire existence and twist or ignore others. Garlic, for example, does not feature at all, and her vampires have no links to bats, but (perhaps in the wake of Game of Thrones) they do seem tied to ravens, which feature ominously throughout her story.
The Vampires of York Tower starts with a prologue set in 1793. I found it a bit confusing, but stick with it. All will be revealed over 200 years later.
We move to today (and there are some neat contemporary references scattered through the book). We’re in York Tower, an upmarket apartment block in New York City. There’s no strong feel of the city as most of the action takes place in the building. York Tower is its own little world. Bronzed windows filter the light. (Picking up any clues yet?) Round-the-clock security keeps residents safe, insulated from the outside world.
We see much of the story through the eyes of the two guards manning the front desk on the day shift. Will and Rufus are ex-cops, happy to be off the beat but taking their responsibilities for security at York Tower very seriously. They care about the tenants and they are sad when several of them die suddenly. But these are elderly people and there is no reason to be suspicious.
There are some strange things going on, though. A mysterious messenger, always making deliveries to the same room – a room that should be empty. There are unexplained power outages and inexplicable smells.
Something bites Will’s neck. Nothing so 19th century as the twin puncture marks of a traditional vampire. In fact, we never really find out how the bite was administered, but this doesn’t get in the way of a pacey story that carries you along with it. Will thinks it’s just an insect bite but soon he finds he loses his appetite, becoming thinner and almost literally wasting away. He thinks it’s cancer, but his sudden sensitivity to light and increasing desire for red meat might give the rest of us a clue as to the real problem.
We begin to meet more of the residents. There are a lot of them, but they are well-drawn and quite easy to keep track of. This becomes even easier as the story moves on and there are fewer and fewer of them. We also meet the Tower’s owner, Richard Blackwood. (I told you to pay attention to the prologue.)
The New York skyline glittered beyond the tinted windows of the York Tower penthouse, a view that had captivated Richard Blackwood for decades. But tonight, his attention was fixed on his wife, Elizabeth, as she stood on the terrace, her silk robe billowing in the evening breeze.
“My dear,” Richard called softly, “you shouldn’t be out there. The sun has barely set.”
I’ll say no more about the plot. At this point you could reasonably assume that you can work the rest of it out, but you’d be wrong. McKenzie’s tale is full of unexpected twists. The finale, a battle royal conducted, naturally, in darkness, brings the book to a thrilling and satisfying conclusion.
Since I started my own Galbraith & Pole vampire series, I’m naturally interested to see how other writers approach the subject. The Vampires of York Tower moves at the breakneck pace that you might associate with New York, while Galbraith & Pole is more attuned to the rhythm of London. The New York vampires also, predictably, have a much higher body count. The dramatic action allows little time for the quiet humour of Galbraith & Pole, but readers are unlikely to miss this as they hurry through the pages. I loved it. The ending does leave the door very slightly ajar for the possibility of a sequel. I’ll definitely read it if there is one.
Galbraith & Pole
If you enjoy vampire stories, do please give Galbraith & Pole a look. One of the characters in York Tower is a dancer “who had spent Sunday afternoons dancing the tango in the park”. I’d love to think this is a nod from McKenzie towards Chief Inspector Pole, who is a great tango enthusiast. It’s a wonderful hobby for a vampire as tango clubs famously operate mainly in the hours of darkness. When a girl is found stabbed through the neck with the stiletto heel of a tango shoe, Pole gets quite upset about it.
The first, tango inspired, Galbraith & Pole book, Something Wicked is just £2.99 on Kindle. (£6.99 in paperback). And look out for a FREE Valentine’s short story on this blog on 14 February.
(AI image of ravens from Microsoft Bing Image Creator)
Jacqueline Reiter fans (and there are many) will know that she has been working on her biography of Sir Home Popham for so long that I’m not sure that her subject (died 1820) wasn’t still alive when she started writing. Late last year, the book was finally published by Helion (in their ‘From Reason to Revolution’ series) and it has been well worth the wait.
Popham was an unlikely naval officer. He had intended to pursue a career in law but financial problems in his family meant that he had to abandon his studies and find paying employment in a hurry. Aged just under 16, he joined the crew of HMS Hyaena as a first-class volunteer under Captain Edward Thompson, who became a surrogate father to him.
Under Thompson, Popham flourished, but when Thompson died, in 1786, Popham lost a valuable patron and learned a vital lesson about the reality of naval life at the time: promotion depended as much (or more) on who you knew than on your professional skill. Popham’s life from then on was as much about gaining political backing for his professional progression as about his naval skill and knowledge. Fortunately he had family connections in the East India Company and, for a while, he abandoned the navy to trade on his own behalf in the Far East.
From then on, his life was a confusion of political manoeuvring, naval work and making money, either alongside his official position or in independent ventures. Reiter’s biography is therefore a tale of ducking and weaving that would leave Del Boy speechless in admiration. Some of Popham’s activities resulted in official praise for his contributions to Britain’s naval victories, some went horribly, horribly wrong. Some were dubiously legal and some, Reiter suggests, were straightforwardly criminal. Popham seems to have spent a disproportionate amount of his time at courts martial, where his early interest in law was deployed in defences of breathtaking audacity, sometimes allowing him to talk his way out of trouble and sometimes digging himself deeper into it. As his career progressed, he spent time ingratiating himself with politicians and served as an MP himself, occasionally making lengthy speeches to defend his actions when they had become so outrageous that they drew the attention of Parliament.
It can be a difficult story to follow. Popham was not always entirely honest and some of his more controversial actions were concealed in a storm of verbiage that has clearly kept Reiter trapped in the National Archives for weeks.
In a career filled with stand-out moments, Popham is probably best remembered for two things. He developed the navy’s flag codes, most famously used when Nelson told the fleet that he expected every man to do his duty, and he took it upon himself to invade Buenos Aires, on the grounds that he was supposed to be in Cape Town and BsAs was so nearby that it would have been rude not to.
I admit an interest here. Popham features in my first book about James Burke, Burke in the Land of Silver, when he is on that infamous South American escapade. Whether he was just being Popham and mounting an invasion off his own bat or whether he had secret orders either encouraging him or directly telling him to do it, is one of history’s mysteries. Reiter is pretty sure he was on his own. I have my doubts, and I think that there is evidence to support his claim. But I’m biased. In Burke in the Land of Silver, I blame the army for the expedition’s ultimate failure and I back Popham.
Blaming the army when anything went wrong was a favourite Popham tactic.
Popham was an expert in combined operations at a time when they were even more chaotic than they are now – and inter-service tensions mean that combined ops are often a nightmare. Walcheren (in the Netherlands), which Napoleonic War enthusiasts can get very excited about, was a historic debacle on a grand scale. Popham was heavily involved. When it was going well, he claimed to be the mastermind behind the entire thing. When it failed (with around 4,000 dead of disease any many others desperately ill), it was all the army’s fault. Fortunately for him, the army was headed by John Pitt, Earl of Chatham, the subject of a previous Reiter biography, The Late Lord. Chatham was everything that Popham was not: solid, dull, not gifted with a great imagination, prone to idleness and a man of honour and probity. He was horribly ill-prepared to cope with the opprobrium directed at him by Popham and the naval commander who blamed poor Chatham for everything. The Earl took the fall, but Popham’s career never really recovered.
John Pitt, Earl of Chatham
Sidelined by the navy, Popham was sent to Spain to harass French forces in coastal areas and provide secure supply lines to Wellington. He proved really good at this but, as so often, over-reached himself, interfering in areas where his assistance was neither required nor appreciated and often alienating the people he worked alongside. (His repeated insistence in referring to the guerillas fighting alongside the British as “brigands” did not go down well.)
Having annoyed almost everyone who mattered, Popham ended up carrying senior diplomats out to India (feeding them at his own expense and, according to Lord Moira, feeding them badly). His irritation was taken out on the crew, who were flogged unmercifully, even by the standards of the day, and came close to mutiny. It was not a happy voyage.
Finally made a Rear Admiral, Popham would have been well-advised to count himself lucky and keep a low profile but that was hardly his nature. Shuffled off to a receiving ship in the Thames, his job was to reduce naval stations to a peacetime establishment. Essentially he was ushering in an era of naval austerity, so spending £5,000 fitting up his state cabin was probably not a good move.
His next job was a posting to Jamaica, ostensibly a respectable post but Jamaica was, literally, where the War Office sent irritating commanders to die. Sadly, his son was the first to go, dead at 17, followed by his daughter who succumbed to yellow fever. Ill himself (he had a stroke while in Jamaica), he returned to England in 1820, dying two months after his arrival back at Spithead.
This breakneck overview of Popham’s career comes far from doing him justice. There’s no mention of his various diplomatic efforts, some straightforward, some strictly unofficial, and some verging on espionage. He was busy on the diplomatic front in the West Indies, Russia, the Red Sea, and India. Sometimes he was very successful – the Tsar made him a Knight of Malta – sometimes less so – his unilateral attempts to negotiate with the Pasha of Egypt caused serious political embarrassment.
His hydrographic surveys resulted in charts that gave the British navy an edge over less well-informed enemies that lasted for decades. His involvement with submarines and torpedoes might have done the same with naval technology but his ideas were, perhaps, a little too far ahead of his time.
Nor does this summary cover his actual war-fighting. He was seldom on board a vessel involved in battle but, when he was, he often performed well. His efforts at Copenhagen were also, according to Rieter, “a complete success”, although the controversy surrounding the campaign meant that he did not, perhaps, get the credit he deserved.
Destruction of Danish vessels at Copenhagen
Popham was, indeed, a “quicksilver captain”: mercurial, hard to pin down, potentially valuable, but very toxic. The British do not like people who can be described as ‘too clever by half’, particularly when they are not shy of advertising their notion of their own genius. Popham was almost a caricature of the arrogant little swot who gets on everybody’s nerves. The sheer breadth of his achievements, far from working in his favour, simply annoyed people and, because he was always active, for every great success there was a highly visible failure.
Reiter’s biography tries to do justice to a man whose remarkable life can hardly be summed up in 350-odd pages but she has done us all a great service by giving us a solidly researched and highly readable account of a figure who deserves the attention he has not really been given over the past couple of centuries.
Popham features in the first James Burke book, Burke in the Land of Silver. The story is closely based on the adventures of the real-life James Burke, whose espionage activities laid the groundwork for the British capture of Buenos Aires in 1806. (The fact that the British had a spy in Buenos Aires is one of the reasons I suspect that Popham’s adventure had official backing.) Popham does feature in the story where he is presented in a generally favourable light. Like Popham, I’m inclined to blame the army for the debacle that followed the successful invasion. Whoever you believe, it’s a rollicking good tale. Buckles are swashed, women — including a princess and a queen — are wooed (almost certainly historically accurately) and villains are defeated. Burke in the Land of Silver is available in paperback or on Kindle.
Picture credits:
Popham portrait by unknown artist. Public domain
‘The Glorious Conquest of Buenos Ayres by the British Forces, 27th June 1806’ Coloured woodcut, published by G Thompson, 1806. Copyright National Army Museum and reproduced with permission.
