The Vampire of Ropraz
Jacques Chessex
Bitter Lemon Press
978-1-904738-33-6


Where I live, winter is not just the name of a season, it’s a state of being. Today I look out the windows—sure, there’s a line of geese heading to where the Boardman pours out into West Bay making a little unfrozen spot, but there’s also snow like grit, like clouds of icy gnats, and the view beyond a block fades away into clammy gray. From below, all day long, comes the sound of chopping and metal on concrete. The few people on the streets walk with their shoulders hunched into collars and faces obscured by scarves. I can see my car from here, growing a toupee of white, the interior vinyl collecting its special frostiness.

But, when all’s said and done, I live in a city. A small city, but nonetheless convivial. You won’t find boys hacking their grandparents to death for a couple hundred bucks, or bar fights that end in the spring when the body catches in the dam. Superstition drifts harmlessly in the garden dream-catchers and cement angels of liberal townies.

The regional paper tells another story—one of generational alcoholism, incest, fundamentalism, the desire for the destruction of culture and the longing to survive by tooth and folklore. A drive to the nearest major ski resort (30 minutes) takes you past homes sided with black plastic, ancient peeling doublewides, windowless cinderblock bars, and tiny isolated stores that sell gas and the smoked flesh of the local wildlife. In the summer there are campers and cabin-owners in these hundreds of acres forests of northern Michigan; in the winter, there’s the ticking of your own brain, or your wife’s brain, or your kid’s.

The people who live in the deep forests are not the entrepreneurial spirits found in cities—for a city attracts idea-makers whether they’re thieves or manufacturers. They’re not of the farmer-type either, who must clear the path to plant and watch the weather, who must plan for good times and bad. Backwoods people live day-to-day, scrap to scrap. Most of them were born in the place; some have been pushed there, like to the end of a rope; a few have invented the place for themselves.

Which is all a long introduction to the kind of chill of the suspected-unknown that The Vampire or Ropraz, a short novel by Prix Goncourt winner Jacques Chessex, produced. High in the Jurat mountains, the twenty-year old daughter of a local dignitary dies of meningitis and is buried in the frozen February earth. Two days later her grave is discovered open, the coffin unscrewed. Intestines are hanging out in the snow, the girl’s left hand has been severed, and her flesh bitten everywhere and spit out in the bushes. Although the story takes place in Switzerland, it is not so far geographically from the land of Vlad, and this rapist of dead women is quickly called “Vampire” by the press.

All right, so the press has always loved catchy titles for their criminals, and although the violation takes place in the isolated, squalid areas, where “[i]deas have no currency, tradition is a dead weight,” where poverty and lack of education leave people “barred inside their skulls,” where ailments are nourished with potions, and spells are concocted with menstrual blood and toad spittle, they don’t lynch the suspect when they finally get their hands on him.

They hand him over to a psychologist who takes him to his ward on Christmas Day to “sing of Christ’s birth, drink mulled wine and eat little cakes baked by volunteers in the kitchen.”

The young man ages twelve years in the ward before the War arrives, opening the gates. Immediately, he joins the Foreign Legion (he was rejected by the army in his youth, in his own country) and is killed seven months later on the Souain road. A broken body in a muddy battlefield would seem to be the end of it, but no: in 1920, France’s Unknown Soldier is chosen by lot from among eight anonymous coffins. Recent DNA research suggests that the body of the soldier who lies beneath the Arc de Triumph is none other than Charles-Augustin Favez, convicted in Switzerland of vampirism and desecration of graves. And the question is, how could this man be a monster in one place and a hero in another?

The Vampire of Ropraz is a superb choice for fiesty book clubs.

The IMBA (Independent Mystery Booksellers Association) announced today its June bestsellers, and I’m sorry to say that not a single independent title was among them. Not one. Not in hardcover, trade, or mass market. Is it possible that the mysteries published by big houses are that much better than the ones produced by independents? I don’t believe it.

I’m something of a fan(atic) about mysteries, and took on the job of reviewing titles for the July/August Mystery Feature in ForeWord. I’m pretty sure that there’s nothing we get more of around here—in the mailroom, that is—than mysteries. I must have had two hundred books in the initial pile, narrowed to about thirty, and then, finally, ten. I believe that each of the Final Ten is absolutely fabulous and deserves a place on your patio this summer.

There’s a new Kerry Greenwood out from Poisoned Pen, Queen of the Flowers. If you like cozy/whimsical/extravagant female protagonists, then this one and Assassins at Ospreys by R.T. Raichev (Soho) are for you.

If grit and unhappiness, money and dirt are your penchant, then try Blood Alley by Tom Coffey. The author’s an editor at the NYT and knows his NYC. Easy Innocence by Libby Fischer Hellman (Bleak House) takes on Chicago, actually the North Shore, in a novel about the degenerate elite.

I rather like traveling abroad in my mysteries. I learn about food, living conditions, the people, and get a little sleuthing exercise as well. Soho always has an amazing collection of these kinds of titles. I enjoyed Reconstruction by Mick Herron (takes place at a kindergarten in London) and Blood of the Wicked by Leighton Gage (takes place in the Brazilian boondocks). Also, The Shadow in the Water by Swedish author Laura Wideburg (Pleasure Boat Studio) is lugubriously wide-open creepy as only they can be in the far north.

Back in the States, there’s a fantastic new book out by Archer Mayer, Open Season. Mayer used to write for the big guys, but left them to publish on his own. Wonder how that’s going for him… The story takes place in Vermont, where coincidentally Mayer is a death inspector for the Medical Examiner in real life. Experience and sharp wit make this series a keeper.

Experience also works in first-time novelist Thomas Taylor’s favor. As a former protective services operator (government bodyguard), his book Mortal Shield (Southeast Missouri State) walks and talks like the real thing and mixes the ultimate American pie of God, guns, and infidelity.

Finally, Overlook has brought out a reissue of a Charles McCarry masterwork, The Better Angels. The time is post-Nixon, fuel is scarce, gas rationed, lights out at dark. And there’s an election going on for president between, on the one hand, an authoritarian, and on the other, a man of the people. Too bad the good guy is also a murderer.

Check out the complete reviews of these books online, plus features on poetry, parenting, and music—and get yourself some great independent books from your independent bookstores.