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Title details for Fangland by John Marks - Available

Fangland

A Novel

by John Marks
Ellen Archer
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
An acclaimed novelist and former 60 Minutes producer grandly reinvents the Dracula epic in the halls of a certain television newsmagazine


In the annals of business trips gone horribly wrong, Evangeline Harker's journey to Romania on behalf of her employer, the popular television newsmagazine The Hour, deserves pride of place. Sent to Transylvania to scout out a possible story on a notorious Eastern European crime boss named Ion Torgu, she has found the true nature of Torgu's activities to be far more monstrous than anything her young journalist's mind could have imagined. The fact that her employer clearly won't get the segment it was hoping for is soon the very least of her concerns.


Back in New York, Evangeline's disappearance causes an uproar at the office and a wave of guilt and recrimination. Then suddenly, several months later, she's heard from: miraculously, she's convalescing in a Transylvania monastery, her memory seemingly scrubbed. But then who was sending e-mails through her account to The Hour employees? And what are those great coffin-like boxes of objects delivered to the office in her name from the Old Country? And why does the show's sound system appear to be infected with some strange virus, an aural bug that coats all recordings in a faint background hiss that sounds like the chanting of...place-names? And what about the rumors that a correspondent has scored an interview with Torgu, here in New York, after all? As a very dark Old World atmosphere deepens in the halls of one of America's most trusted television programs, its employees are forced to confront a threat beyond their wildest imaginings, a threat that makes gossip about an impending corporate shakeup seem very quaint indeed.


Written in the form of diary entries, e-mails, therapy journals, and other artifacts of early-twenty-first-century American professional-class life, compiled as an informal inquest by a very interested party, Fangland manages both to be a genuinely-in fact triumphantly-frightening vampire novel in the grand tradition and a, yes, biting commentary on the way we live and work now.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    January 25, 2007

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781400123599
      • File size: 368787 KB
      • Duration: 12:48:18

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Four talented narrators tackle a modern-day vampire tale, told via emails, therapy journals, and diaries. The story starts at "The Hour," a documentary TV show. The author's history as a "60 Minutes" producer gives realism to the depiction of an average workday and makes the story's ghastly details even more chilling. Listeners journey with Assistant Producer Evangeline Harker to Romania to lure an Eastern European gangster on-screen. Instead the interview serves as a vehicle that gives Dracula himself access to a post-9/11 New York City. Harker's disappearance and resurgence months later at a Transylvanian monastery wreaks havoc with the lives of the entire staff of the news show from the lowliest editor to the aging and paranoid senior executive. D.P.D. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      June 25, 2007
      The unusually large cast that reads Marks’s multiperspective, modern vampire story helps make up for the lack of special effects one might expect. There is no creepy music, no doors creaking or wind shrieking through the trees to augment the tale of what happens after Evangeline Harker, a lovely assistant producer of a venerable TV news show, travels to Romania to meet a fabled gangster. Her trip goes horribly wrong and soon her colleagues in New York are afflicted as well. Marks, a former 60 Minutes
      producer, is at his best when writing about the life of the newsroom, which we witness through the conversation and thoughts of people who are all concerned about Harker’s disappearance and the horrors that have followed, but who observe each other and the rest of the show’s staff with keen distrust and disdain. This reading adds little to the chilling story aside from the varied voices, yet as a novel take on the worn-out vampire story, with a steady drumbeat of macabre events alternating with dryly funny commentary, it is sure to hold listeners until the end. Simultaneous release with the Penguin Press hardcover (Reviews, Nov. 6).

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from November 6, 2006
      Former 60 Minutes
      producer Marks (The Wall
      ) puts his experience on the legendary TV news magazine to good use in this highly inventive reimagining of Bram Stoker's Dracula
      . His naïve protagonist, Evangeline Harker, a young producer for the TV news show The Hour
      , reluctantly accepts an assignment into the wilds of Romania to explore doing a segment on a legendary criminal figure, Ion Torgu. Evangeline soon finds herself at the very outskirts of civilization, and after hearing a missionary's account of a supernatural plague that affected a whole community in Africa, she's accosted by Torgu himself, doing an excellent impersonation of the vampire count. Her subsequent imprisonment in a deserted hotel also parallels Stoker's tale, but Marks manages to make the familiar fresh, so that even devotees of the original will find themselves rapidly turning pages and being drawn into Evangeline's fate and the stories of her friends and colleagues at The Hour
      .

    • Library Journal

      June 1, 2007
      Evangeline Harker, producer for Sunday news show The Hour, is sent to Romania to interview crime lord Ion Torgu for a possible segment. Although imprisoned by Torgu and infected by his strange vampirism, she eventually manages to escape. After months of self-exile in a Romanian convent, she returns to New York, finding it much changed. During her absence, Torgu has shipped himself to The Hour's offices, and strange things are happening on the 20th floor. This retelling of Bram Stoker's Dracula dwells little on the supernatural bells and whistles of modern horror fiction, instead burrowing into the evil heart of the tale. Instead of a castle, Torgu inhabits a creepy derelict hotel; his "brides" are brutish Greek laborers. No fangs for this vampire but a knife and bucket to slit the throats of his victims and harvest their blood. Ellen Archer, as the voice of Evangeline, is a compelling presence, but the voices of the characters at the news organization (Todd McLaren, Michael Prichard, and Simon Vance) are less successful. The New York section of the story is told in a collection of emails, voice messages, and journal entries, which makes it difficult to maintain an atmosphere of suspense. The term "Fangland" is used by a character to describe the sharks running the show. Recommended for all fiction collections.Janet Martin, Southern Pines P.L., NC

      Copyright 2007 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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