The Golden Age of Newman

Finding Kim Newman novels used to be such a damned chore. While I stumbled across the first Anno Dracula book in the local library and found all the Jack Yeovil novels with unusual ease, I had to order in The Bloody Red Baron in from the UK back in the 1990s, and it took me years and years to find a copy of Life's Lottery.

I came to Newman's work through his movie criticsm and fell deeply in love with the pop culture phantasmagoria of his stories. Joyful genre mash-ups with heart of their own, and loads of good jokes (a James Bond analogue transforming from Connery to Moore; Biggles versus giant vampire bats; Popeye the vampire needing the iron in the spinach to survive).  

Now the rest of the world has caught up with Newman's sweet spot of pastiche, Titan Books has been slamming out the Newman in recent years, with new versions of the entire Anno Dracula series, collections of long-out-of-print stories and new novels on a fairly annual basis.

I don't have to go hunting for them anymore, and I'm always up for new Newman. They're the most consistently entertaining novels I ever have the fortune to read, and I can't wait for the next chapter.