You expect a literate feast from Carlos Fuentes, but you probably would not have expected him to reanimate the classic vampire genre in Vlad, a playful but genuinely creepy sequel to Bram Stoker's Dracula. The 40-something lawyer narrator, Yves Navarro, is summoned by his housebound elderly employer to take on a new client from an old Central European family. Count Vladimir Radu is almost 90 years old, with a 10-year-old daughter. He dresses entirely in black, wears a toupee, a fake mustache and sunglasses. He's looking for a remote house far away from everyone, with all the windows blacked out and a secret tunnel.
Fortunately, Navarro's wife is a real estate agent, and the Count is quickly housed in a nice mountainous neighborhood outside Mexico City. He invites Navarro over for a visit--at night, of course. Fuentes even throws in one of Dracula's signature lines of dialogue ("I never drink... wine"). But just when you want to dismiss him as theatrical cardboard, the long-lived Count causes a shivery chill by giving Navarro a message to pass on to his wife: "Tell her she left her scent behind."
That's just the beginning, as the Count ("All my friends call me Vlad") begins to undermine Navarro's sense of security. Navarro finds a photo of his wife and 10-year-old daughter posted with thumbtacks at the Count's house. Lied to by the mother of his daughter's best friend, tricked by his employer, deceived by his wife, Navarro stumbles deeper and deeper into terror, always one step behind the vampire-savvy reader, who knows there's a reason the Count's home has no mirrors, every room has drains in the floor, and coffins filled with earth line the underground tunnel.
Painfully short, Vlad never mocks its source material, and if its classic vampire accoutrements (the garlic, the hunchback servant) are occasionally predictable, there's enough reality in Navarro's panicky struggles to save his family to make it uncomfortable and unsettling. Just in case the dinner served to Navarro of animal organs in sauce isn't enough for you, his corrupt employer provides a long, gut-twisting summary of the atrocities of Vlad the Impaler that is (unfortunately) unforgettable. The whole tour de force is a neat little riff on horror staples, swift and sure and scary, respecting its traditions but adding a fatalism and moral corruption that fit perfectly into Mexico City. --Nick DiMartino
Shelf Talker: The late Carlos Fuentes's genuinely scary sequel to Dracula, in which the Count moves to Mexico City and menaces a lawyer's wife and daughter.