ientious va

-.Barbara Black
BOOK REVIEW

The Night inside, A Vampire
‘Tiviller, ny Nancy Baker, Penguin

HAVE. certain sympathy
for vampires. My muse vis- ’
its at night when the light
has slipped away and the last
bird song has faded into
- silence, Only.then is my mind
active and alive. This, too, is
‘the time of vampire feedings,
“when the clammy creatures -
- stir from Sleep and stalk in.

search of pale-skinned necks.
‘Inher book, The Night Inside, -

on ‘Canadian, writer Nancy Baker

: {takes you into the emotional world
‘of the vampire; from the mon-
-strous cravings for blood to the
niisgivings about eternal life. Her
vampire, Dimitri Rozokov, is‘a
noble man and a sort of sage.
Etemal life has to impart some wis-
dom, after all.’

As the book begins, Rozokov :

"slowly wakens from a 50-year,
slumber. Baker describes the bodi-
ly sensations he experiences:

:".“The bleod that had crawled ©
along the interior miles of his body
as sluggishly as *°~'acier now
began to melt a ow. Nerves
sparked into'l’’ rset muscles
twitching in'r | 48 Contact ~ -

as: ‘re-estab| ‘ith the long- -
if hands and
ed then
ting like pale-

in sympathy with his innermost
emotions. Rozokov isnot a vam-
pire of the one-dimensional vari-
ety. He suffers panic in the dark
and a fear of being entombed. He
is repulsed by his own irrational
craving for fresh blood. He is a

. vampire with a conscience.

Rozokov moves fearfully
through the darkness of the ware-
house into the dim light of
evening, already aware of the
insatiable hunger that racks his
body. His senses are heightened.
He hears the frantic beating of sev-
eral hearts in the building belong-
ing to men ...

The story now, flashes back to
the 1800s with the diary entry of
one Ambrose Delaney Dale. Over
100 years ago, Dale was intensely
pursuing a.certain vampire wh:
was making the rounds of the
bawdy houses in town. Baker

‘weaves these diary entries into the

storyline, making a connection
with Dale later on in the story

. when we discover his deranged

daughter has taken up the hunt for
Mr. Rozokov.

Back in the present, the fate of
the vampire in the warehouse still

“unknown, we meet Ardeth

Alexander, graduate student of
19th-century history. What she
does not know, as she makes the
rounds of an end-of-term party, is
that she will soon be sharing a cell
with the noble, blood-sucking
gentleman.

She is still grieving over the
unexplained death of her former .
boyfriend Tony, whose body was
found at the bottom of a ravine.

' Yes, there is a connection.

Soon after the party, Ardeth is:
kidnapped by two repugnant men
and taken blindfolded to a dark
room. There in the next cell is a”

.pale-faced man witha“molten
gaze.” Skeptical to the last minute,

the level-headed Ardeth finds her-
self in a modern-day nightmare

“when she realizes the “man” is a

vampire. -
She discovers the reason she i ‘is
sharing quarters with him is she is

to be the subject ofa porno, film ° -

which features her flesh anc! the
vampire’s feeding talents.

Ardeth’s fear changes to deter-
mination. Rather than becoming a
victim of the manstrous jerks who
hold her captive, she devises her
own plan.’

In the tradition of Mary

- Shelley's Frankenstein, Baker has

us comparing the “voluntary”,

stal

immorality of human behavior to
the involuntary immorality of the
vampire. In the end, what is most
monstrous is the human capacity
for evil.

Unlike the traditional Gothic
story, the heroine, Ardeth, is no
lily-skinned vampire victim. She is
a woman of the ‘90s who plunges
willfully into the dark side.

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The ending of The Night Inside
is a little hysterical, with a plot
twrist on the Dale woman that is
silly, but overall it is a thrilling .
adventure that rises above vampire
schlock, occupying a genre that.
might be called erotic horror.

It might put you off Bloody
Marys for awhile — but then
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