Seance for a Vampire

By Fred Saberhagen

Number 8 in The Dracula Series.

In Saberhagen's series, vampires are people too. They are just a tad different, that's all. Sure they want to suck your blood, but they wouldn't mind being your pal too.
Anyway, in this story, Sherlock Holmes and Watson are called upon to investigate a phony psychic who has supposedly conjured up the spirit of young woman who recently drowned. The woman's fiancee is sure her grieving parents are being scammed and wants Holmes to prove it. He invites the two investigators to the parents' house to attend the seance.
So Holmes and Watson attend the seance, and sure enough, the dead girl appears. She claims she will never be able to rest in peace until an ancient wrong is righted and treasure stolen by an ancestor of the family is returned to its rightful owner. In the uproar that follows, Watson notices that the so-called spirit has no reflection. Holmes is attacked and carried off by some immensely strong attacker and disappears.
Watson, having prior experience with vampires, is pretty sure the spirit girl is in fact not dead but a vampire and he is also afraid that Holmes is now in the clutches of whatever vampire turned the girl into one. Fearing for Holmes' life, Watson contacts Dracula for help. Dracula, it turns out, is related to Holmes and is willing to help Watson in finding the kidnapped Holmes.
The course of their investigation puts them on the trail of a pirate who lost his treasure and blames the vampire girl's family for it. This vampire is a little bit nuts and totally barking up the wrong tree as far as his treasure goes.
Anyways, after rescuing Holmes from an early grave, they track the pirate vampire to Russia and confront him in his sumptuous home. (A home so sumptuous it makes you wonder why the pirate vampire is so intent upon getting the treasure because he sure doesn't seem to be hurting for money.)

I was not familiar with this series before I read this book. To jump into a series without starting at the beginning is a bit jarring. Especially Dracula turning up as a friend of the family and ready to lend a helping hand when needed, that was odd. But never mind that, the story just never touched me. Maybe because the women in the story are mainly only props to be used and abused and put aside. They get raped, turned into vampires, sucked on, entranced, killed, staked, kidnapped and driven insane, but they never really get much of a say in the story. They are just there to be the pathetic victims and that's all. Also, the Dracula character is pretty much a wet fish. He pulls a few vampire tricks but never gets to confront the killer vampire and at the end of the story he misses out on all the action because he gets hypnotized by Rasputin who gets to make a surprise appearance at the end of the story. Bottom line, this story was just not that interesting.