Evangeline Harker thought she was going to land the opportunity of a lifetime. An assistant producer at The Hour, a news magazine show not unlike 60 Minutes, Evangeline is sent on assignment to Transylvania to meet with the mysterious Ion Torgu. Torgu, believed to be the most influential crime lord in Eastern Europe has made it known that he intends to turn himself in to the authorities and he wants The Hour to cover his story.
Torgu turns out to be much different than Evangeline was expecting. Short, stocky and grotesquely gruesome he does not fit the part of one of the most powerful men in all of Europe. It’s not long before Evangeline begins to suspect that there is something very wrong about the mysterious crime lord. What she doesn’t suspect is that Torgu is far more than a mere criminal, he is the embodiment of a pure, unadulterated evil as old as mankind. Kidnapped and imprisoned in the monster’s burnt husk of a former communist hotel Evangeline is confronted by horrors that can’t possibly be real but she knows that she must keep her wits about her if she is to have any hope of survival. Forced to choose between escape and death, Evangeline soon learns that freedom comes with a heavy price and that the cost is paid in blood.
Back in New York odd things are happening in the offices of The Hour. With the arrival of unexplained deliveries from Romania, including video tapes containing nothing but images of a chair with unusual whispering noises and large boxes containing ‘archeological fragments’, no one knows it yet but Torgu has begun his hostile takeover of the most influential news program in the world. As a strange madness begins to engulf those who work on the 20th floor few suspect that they have become pawns in a plot so diabolical that it threatens to overshadow even the events of the most tragic day in American history.
This is not your teenager’s vampire novel. Set in the heart of a post 9/11 news magazine show (John Marks just so happens to be a former producer for 60 Minutes) Fangland is a sophisticated novel which uses the storytelling format made famous by Bram Stoker in his novel Dracula to piece together the horrific story of Evangeline Harker’s encounter with the monstrous Ion Torgu. Using emails, letters and journal entries to tell the tale, John Marks takes his readers on a journey into the heart of darkness, a darkness as black as the human soul and as ancient as mankind itself. A truly terrifying read Fangland serves as a reminder of why vampires remain one of the most feared creatures in literature.
A film adaption of Fangland is currently in production by Sriram and Blumhouse Productions directed by horror master John Carpenter and starring Hilary Swank as Evangeline Harker. The movie is expected to be released sometime in 2011.
-Chris
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