From Publishers Weekly
In this humdrum mystery, Babson ( Encore Murder ) unsuccessfully attempts to evoke a creepy, B-movie ambience by casting her series regulars in a second-rate Dracula remake. Trixie Dolan, the somewhat scatterbrained narrator, and Evangeline Sinclair, her peevish cohort, were once stars of the silver screen; now they're forced to share a suite in a drafty, gloomy English castle that doubles as the vampire flick's set. The accommodations are most unpleasant: bats fly through the halls, the director intentionally serves only red wine and other blood-colored fare at mealtimes and his mistress has the obligatory unusual wound on her throat. Finally, after a pompous actor is stabbed to death, Trixie and Evangeline themselves are suspected of being immortal bloodsuckers. For all Trixie's breathless complaints about the unbearable tension, this mystery remains sluggish. Thin characterization dulls the interest, and such conspicuously odd players as a wax-museum curator and a disfigured former screen idol seem more benign than threatening. Even with the stock pieces in place, Babson creates neither foreboding mood nor hair-raising drama.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
Fading movie stars Trixie Dolan and Evangeline Sinclair (Encore Murder, 1990, etc.) are at work in a Dracula movie being made by bard-driving, erratic hack director Job Farrady, in a hat-infested old hotel in the resort town of Whitby - freezing cold and isolated in mid-January. All sorts of undercurrents crisscross as the cast assembles - rival actress Griselda von Kirstenberg; Hungarian Igor Ferenczy, onetime movie idol crippled and deformed by the Gestapo; wan young American Lora, Job's current mistress; arrogant leading man Fabian de Bourne and a host of others, all equally improbable. So is the plot, in which every hackneyed vampire cliche is rerun, a murder is committed, and retribution is exacted, all in a haze of hysteria and archly barbed dialogue. Babson at her silliest: only for the most forbearing of fans. (Kirkus Reviews)
--This text refers to an alternate
Hardcover
edition.