My five favourite gags in Anno Dracula

I remain convinced that Kim Newman's Anno Dracula books are the most entertaining series of novels I've ever read. Newman's world is full of all kinds of monsters from novels and movies, are tremendously exciting, ridiculously clever and often very, very funny. Listing all the easter eggs and in-jokes in the series so far would take a very, very long time, but I can easily name five off the top of my head that still make me laugh when I think about them. (The one that just missed out was the Poe/Kafka team-up, but I already had two other jokes from the second book in there.)

These are obviously all huge spoilers, but if you haven't read any of the books in the series, you are really missing out. Go do that and come back afterwards.

1. Jack the Ripper really is a Jack

The entire first book in the series is based around this great gag - I read this not long after it came out, when Coppola's Dracula film was still very fresh in the memory, and it was uncomfortably easy to imagine Richard E Grant stalking the streets of Whitechapel, a silver scalpel in his hand.

2. Biggles walks out of no man's land

The WW1 fighter aces in The Bloody Red Baron come from all levels of fiction, but James Charles Bigglesworth is still the top dog in the English barracks. And then he disappears halfway through the book, falling to his doom over the battlefield after his kite has been torn apart by giant vampire bats. It looks like it's all over for the aerial ace, and then he just walks out of  no man's land at the very end of the book, after having his own adventures in the vampire-strewn warzone. Biggles always comes through!

3. Alas, poor Bela

Sometimes you wonder when somebody obvious is going to show up in these books, especially in certain time periods, but the great Lugosi's sad appearance at the end of the WW1 book was definitely a surprise the first time around, while still making the best use of Dracula by keeping him off the central stage entirely. 

4. James Bond turns from Sean Connery into Roger Moore

It's not really James Bond because he's still in copyright, but it's also obviously James Bond hanging around in Dracula Cha Cha Cha, and he's just as brutal and nasty as he should be. He's just a tool for the main villain in the end, but the story does take the time to note that Bond is suddenly expressing too much with his eyebrows, and his Scottish accent is fading, as he becomes less of a human being, and more of a shallow role.  

5. Popeye the Sailor Vampire 

It doesn't take long to figure out who the dude with the hideous grimace, massive forearms and corncob pipe is. It's still a great gag when Popeye the vampire figures out that it's really the iron in the blood that he needs, and that he can get a burst of energy by eating spinach with its high levels. It's probably the dumbest joke in the whole series, but it's still an absolute cracker.