I am a huge fan of Dawn Kurtagich and have read the majority of her YA fiction and featured three of her books in my review almanac The YA Horror 400, which was published earlier in the year. Dawn’s YA is on the mature side, so adults could happily enjoy Dead House (2015), The Creeper Man (2016) or Teeth in the Mist (2019) without feeling under-challenged. I was not surprised to hear this talented author was graduating to adult fiction, as Teeth in the Mist (which has a sequel, Blood on the Wind) in particular, is extremely close to adult level anyway.

The Madness leans heavily upon Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) in that it reinvents the legendary story in modern-day England, abandoning the east coast town of Whitby for North Wales and London. ‘Dracula’ himself is not mentioned by name at all, but we do have Jonathan Harker, Mina, Lucy and other characters, such as Renfield, who is renamed, becoming a female. Kurtagich plays around with the characters, wisely not simply repackaging them, and her version of Jonathan Harker is a million miles away from Stoker’s creation. The Madness is much more about the female protagonists, and the men are given precious little (perhaps not enough) to do.

If you have never read Stoker’s Dracula, you will probably be none the wiser regarding what Kurtagich alters, keeps, evolves or discards in her story. This is by no means a copy and is a highly entertaining read in its own right, and fans of the original novel will have fun spotting the similarities and subtle differences. I did wonder how things would have played out if Kurtagich had renamed all the characters and kept a greater and more deliberate distance from the original Dracula story. Opinions will undoubtedly differ.

Much of The Madness plays out akin to a dark thriller rather than a horror novel, and there is not a whiff of vampires until well into the second half of a book, which is centred on main character Dr. Mina Murray. Mina is a psychiatrist (who we realise has her own personal problems as the novel unfolds) and is called to assess a young woman found naked wandering around and disorientated on a London street. Simultaneously, Mina is called back to her childhood home of north Wales to help her estranged former best friend, Lucy, fight an undiagnosed ailment. Mina notices the symptoms the two women show are strangely similar and when she investigates further, discovers a pattern. But whilst doing so, is faced with a wall of silence from the authorities and the author is clearly making a point about how women are treated in wider modern society. The Lucy narrative is the part of the story which most closely reflects the original plot.

The Madness covers a lot of ground, dealing with Mina’s complex relationship with her mother, her reasons for abandoning her Welsh home in the first place, and the abuse of power. Parallels could easily be drawn with how modern day prostitution, people smuggling, or how other criminal gangs operate, with the police being complicit in what happens in the book. Mina’s mother is a feisty character who is seen as the local witch, which cleverly allows for a lot of Welsh legends and folklore to be added into the plot. The flashbacks to when Mina was a teenager and her original attraction to Jonathan Harker is also nicely managed.

Students of Dracula might ask where is Dr Van Helsing? Which is a valid question. He does not clearly exist in The Madness and if anything, Mina adopts his role, adding complexities to the character. She is struggling with her own trauma and a different cycle of abuse, which is revealed as the plot moves advances. This is a character-driven story and for a more traditional action-driven vampire novel, it probably required a more traditional Van Helsing. The fear and helplessness the captive women fear oozes from the page and without a traditional hero, they have little sense of hope.

The Madness is an engaging read and I powered through it quickly, but we could have seen more of the vampires beyond the party scenes, and considering Dracula (if indeed that is who he is) is hundreds of years old, he makes a pretty dumb decision near the end. Overall, the ending feels rushed and the manner in which it plays out is over-familiar and has been used in other novels. I can understand wishing to draft a book from a female point of view, but the balance of this story feels slightly off, as almost every man in it apart from Jonathan is portrayed as a scumbag. The abuse of power is seen as a greater evil than the vampires themselves, who are creatures of desire and greed.