With the 'Conversation Pieces' series that I've been enjoying so much closing in on the hundred mark, it seemed like a good time to celebrate that achievement by diving into four earlier titles written by Cynthia Ward, who's attended some of our local conventions, like CoKoCon, and was kind enough to sign them for us. They're the 'Blood-Thirsty Agent' series, which began here with 'Conversation Pieces' volume fifty-three, and as mashups of fictional characters from Victorian genre literature with real life equivalents, they're clearly right up my alley.

We can tell that there's going to be a lot here just by reading the back cover blurb, which takes 'Dracula', 'Carmilla' and 'Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea', mashes them up together and hurls them at the maiden voyage of the 'Titanic'. The first paragraph adds M from 'James Bond' and the second page explains that 'The War of the Worlds' was real. In fact, the 'Titanic' is deemed unsinkable because it's been designed to use reverse-engineered Martian heat ray technology. Oh, there's an analytical engine on board too, though we never meet Babbage and Lovelace.

Of course, most of these Victorian standards have already been used in mashup fiction, so it's not unfair to consider this, at least initially, 'League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' fan fiction. I reviewed the first two of those graphic novels relatively recently and the second involved both the Martian invasion and Mina Harker of 'Dracula' fame working as a secret agent for M. Here, a decade or so later, M's still in charge but it's Mina's daughter Lucy who's working for him in a secret agent capacity. Lucy's real father was Count Dracula, hence her dhampir status, but she grew up with Jonathan Harker as her father and now has M as her stepfather.

Maybe this was pitched as 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Next Generation'. My initial question was whether M was Prof. Moriarty or Mycroft Holmes. The best thing about the book is that Ward successfully moves beyond fan fiction territory and builds a story of her own that doesn't so overtly resemble that obvious inspiration. She even adds her own little touches and references, like how the 'Titanic' serves Pinot Grand Fenwick, product of that tiny duchy in 'The Mouse That Roared', and a whole slew of characters here are real, including a few I didn't recognise.

Behind obvious fictional characters like Countess Mircalla Karnstein of 'Carmilla' fame and Lord Greyborough, a thinly disguised Tarzan (surely changed just enough to avoid legal action from the Burroughs estate), I recognised Mrs. Maggie Brown, later famous as "The Unsinkable Molly Brown", but hadn't realised that Maj. Archibald Butt and some of the crew of the 'Titanic' were real as well until I looked them up afterwards.

In fact, the scene in Lifeboat 6—spoiler alert, folks: the 'Titanic' sinks—is pretty accurate. Mrs. Brown really did pressure Quartermaster Robert Hichens to turn back to look for any potential survivors in the icy water. In fact, she even threatened to throw him off the boat! However, she didn't, as far as we're aware, give blood to reinvigorate a heroic dhampir at the same time. At least, if she did, it wasn't included in 'A Night to Remember' and that would have been a heck of an omission!

As with 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen', much of the point here is to test our grasp of Victorian literature. It's almost like a game of 'Pokémon', where, however much we know, we'll never catch 'em all. Behind that game, though, is an honest-to-goodness pulp adventure story, and I wonder if that would be helped by not knowing who many of these characters are. Anyone who knows most may fairly assume that the villains of the piece are the ones Ward invented for this book and simple process of elimination quickly narrows down the possibilities.

Put simply, Lucy Harker works for her stepfather M in British Intelligence, presumably following in her mother's footsteps. He tasks her with sailing on the 'Titanic' as shadow for an American, Maj. Archibald Butt, who's carrying documents of extreme importance (including plans for the recently rediscovered 'Nautilus') to the United States. They're the MacGuffin of the piece and it shouldn't surprise that they are indeed stolen during the voyage. Lucy now has to find out who stole them and then recover them for the crown.

The primary characters serve as the suspects, as in any Agatha Christie novel. There's the able Lord Greyborough and his wife, suspicious because he quickly becomes her protector on board—after all, she's a woman travelling alone—and because he clearly has hidden talents. There's a pair of Germans, Dr. Krüger and his nephew, Lt. Franz Schlosser, suspicious because the latter is eager to make Lucy's acquaintance but the former forbids it as he considers her sub-human (he ironically doesn't know she's dhamphir but assumes she has Magyar or Tartar blood). There's a loud American widow, Mrs. Maggie Brown, who knows a lot more than she should.

And there's Miss Clarimel Stein, who makes quite the appearance and, in doing so, sparks a new angle to the story. She and Lucy experience an immediate and strong mutual attraction but are also immediately aware of what they are. Lucy recognises her as an upiór and she in turn knows that Lucy is a dhampir. That provides us with a romantic angle, which is intense but handled in a tasteful manner, as befits the era. It also provides us with a side mission, because they are both very aware that Lucy must stake her and drop her into the ocean, which is even more romantic than the romance. And, it serves as practical application for Lucy after a chat about philosophy with Mrs. Brown.

Maggie is highly perceptive and has experience with vampires in Colorado, so asks questions of Lucy that she isn't expecting to hear. Do vampires have souls? Are they inherently evil? Do they have emotions? Perhaps the answers are yes, no and yes rather than the precise opposite that Lucy has grown up assuming, which makes her wonder about the vampires she's killed already, as well as the one she fully intends to kill on board ship. This sits well, alongside the earlier dose of supernatural anthropology, in which we learn that upióry must sleep on their native soil but aren't affected by sunlight. Dhampir, on the other hand, are half vampire, with the benefits of the latter's blood, but they still have souls.

I had an absolute blast with this book, which works as a Victorian mashup, as a spy thriller, as a historical drama, as a supernatural reawakening and as a character study. Lucy is suspicious, as any spy must be, but also passionate. She surely gets the former from her step-family, because M is astoundingly insightful, noticing that she's a lesbian at fifteen, and his younger brother is a rather well-known consulting detective. Most of the supporting cast would be worthy leads in their own stories, especially Lord Greyborough and Mrs. Brown. Countess Karnstein, for it's no surprise to discover that Miss Stein is a disguise, is thoroughly enticing, too.

There are flaws, but they're mostly inherent in this being a novella. Ward effectively attempts to write a novel without enough pages to do it justice, so ends up falling a little short. It's not a difficult task to figure out who the villains must be, even if they mask their scents at the scene of the crime by breaking a bottle of toilet water. Had Ward had twice or thrice the page count, she would have deepened the characters we have further and added more to muddy the water and thus make it harder for us to figure things out.

I'm not complaining though. If I'm to read a novella, I want it to be as jam-packed full of all the gems of Victorian literature as 'The Adventure of the Incognita Countess', then spun into a new action story that's given a memorable historical setting. If I'd have read this in 2017 when it was first published, I'd have been pleading for a sequel. Because I'm reading it in 2025, that sequel (and the two beyond it) are sitting by my bedside ready for me to dive into them. See you next month for 'The Adventure of the Dux Bellorum'. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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