The Golden
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In the mid-nineteenth century, vampires gather at Castle Banat, one of their most sprawling and ancient warrens. Their five-hundred-year breeding project has produced the Golden, a mortal of perfect blood, and they've come to drink from her in a ceremony that will incidentally make her one of the Family. When the girl is found murdered, the clan’s shadowy patriarch calls on the detective Michel Beheim to solve the crime. But Michel has been a vampire for only a short while, and though he was a talented investigator among mortals, he is ill prepared for the task. Soon he is fighting to survive the bizarre terrors of the labyrinthine castle and the schemes of vampires who guard a secret that may forever alter the world of the undead.
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The aristocracy of vampires has gathered at the ancient fortress of Castle Banat in the Carpathian Mountains to argue politics and, for some, to partake of the Golden, a woman who has been bred to have blood of a particularly delectable and intoxicating quality. However, when the Golden is discovered murdered one evening, it falls on newly converted vampire Beheim, who was previously a police inspector, to seek out the culprit. He soon learns that this investigation will be like none he conducted as a mortal and that failure could spell his doom.
The first word that comes to mind when thinking about this book is “operatic.” The setting of Castle Banat, which is vast and mysterious enough to rival Gormenghast, holds many mysteries, and the intrigues between the vampires are often quite complex. Beheim is an interesting protagonist, largely sympathetic, though flawed; we see these flaws amplified as part of his new existence, and there are times it is easy to wonder if he will cross over from sympathetic to deranged. Shepard's style is up to the task of describing such an grandiose and fascinating story.
