Anno Dracula by Kim Newman

Alternate history novels can often be clichéd works, where the alteration is that either the Nazis won World War 2, or the South won the American Civil War. Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula, first released in 1992, took a fantastically different tack by making the alteration through a novel – in Anno Dracula, we get to see what would have happened if Dracula’s plot had succeeded in Bram Stoker’s tale. Dracula has taken over Victorian Britain, and now vampires and humans mix in a new sort of society. But we see this from the point of view of tangential characters – Dracula has become Prince Regent by marrying Queen Victoria, and barely appears directly in the book.

Instead, the story is a mystery as a male spy and a female vampire try to track down this reality’s Jack the Ripper, who, in a nice twist, is a vampire murderer. Real and fictional characters mix to amusing effect – Oscar Wilde enjoys being a vampire whilst Sherlock Holmes is locked away somewhere on the continent, lest he solve the mystery too quickly. The clever premise is strong enough to have spawned two sequels, with a third to follow. Bloody good stuff. [Keir Hind]