It’s been a quest years in the making. I first found the Dark Shadows novels by Marilyn Ross at the Goodwill Store in Seneca, Pennsylvania. The series had recently finished its television run and, as this was a used book bin, and limited in size, you could never tell what you might find. My teenage self, fascinated by vampire lore, eagerly read those I could find. I got rid of the volumes I had when I attended college and began to miss them when I was old enough to admit such things. It took at least fifteen years to locate all of them, and now, for the first time in my life, I have read the entire series. Barnabas, Quentin and the Vampire Beauty isn’t always easy to find. I certainly hadn’t read it before. Not that it’s high art—the campiness shows through the gothic setting from time-to-time—and yet it’s an accomplishment.
This particular story again shows some development from what had gone before. The vampire beauty is a young woman tricked into having weight reduction surgery in Switzerland. The surgery, naturally enough, transforms her into a vampire. She needs help so she seeks out Barnabas Collins, which leads her to Collinwood. From there a set of adventures head toward the typical climax of this series of books. Nevertheless, W. E. D. Ross seems to have shown some improvement over the thirty-two novels in the series. This story seems less similar to others in the series as a whole. Quite a bit of effort is spent on trying to find a vampire cure, but for Adele Marriot rather that Barnabas Collins.
I have to wonder if Ross knew this would be the last Dark Shadows book he would write for the series. He did write other gothic fiction, and even a novelization of the movie, House of Dark Shadows, but the initial series ends with a kind of knowing that we’ve reached the end of something. Was he told by someone at Paperback Library, “Hey, we’re pulling the plug on the series” or did he simply run out of steam? The daily television show ran for about 1225 episodes. This original novel series had far fewer. Still, the thrill of hunting all of them down, lining them on my shelf, and then reading them in order was a rare pleasure. It was a recapturing of, perhaps even a completing of, part of my childhood. It may have taken decades to accomplish, but an accomplishment is an accomplishment.
