Publisher's Weekly Review
Saberhagen, whose Thorn mixed Arthurian legend, time travel and vampires, once again blurs genre distinctions in this horror fantasy featuring that beloved SF device, time travel. Joe Keogh is a Chicago-based private investigator who is hired to find a teenager lost in the Grand Canyon in 1991. He brings three assistants, as well as one ``Mr. Strangeways.'' Ominously, two other people-- a Civilian Conservation Corps worker in 1935 and a woman in 1965 --were kidnapped by a vampire named Edgar Tyrell in the same part of the canyon where Keogh searches nearly six decades later. The two plots, linked by Tyrell (who is the missing teenager's father), come crashing together in a climax that is more confusing than exciting. Although the cast is crowded (two of Keogh's assistants could have been removed to no effect), the nosferatu Strangeways--a Saberhagen regular whose other name is Drakulyasp correct --is a fascinating character, and the novel's quick pace holds reader interest. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Dark fantasy about a deformity in time in the Grand Canyon, by the author of the Berserker and Lost Swords series, etc. Saberhagen begins his time-warp tale by anchoring it solidly in gritty 1935, with down-and-outer Jake Rezner coming across a young woman artist in the Grand Canyon with whom he falls into an affair. It happens that Camilla's the bait for her master, Edgar Tyrrell, a sculptor who is now among the nosferatu, or vampires. Tyrannous Tyrrell has kept Camilla wrapped in a time warp--in which he has a mine from which he digs strange little white nodules. He- -or his divorced wife Sarah--is selling his sculpture piecemeal in the 1990's, now that he's a famous ``dead'' eccentric. Jake finds himself in bondage to Tyrrell, who is building himself a psychic empire based on the time warp. Meanwhile, in 1991, aged Sarah hires the Keogh psychic detective agency to recover her missing grandniece, Cathy, who is lost in the Canyon. Bill Burdon, who works for Keogh, himself gets lost in the Canyon and runs across Cathy, who's camping out in a geologic time-fault in One Million B.C. Bill makes Polaroids of her when she refuses to return with him. Then, trying to find a way out, he discovers the famous Tyrrell house--in 1935!--in which live young Sarah and little Cathy. Later, he shows the aged Sarah pictures of herself and Cathy he's taken in 1935--as well as shots of Cathy in a much earlier period. How will Jake and Camilla, in the Canyon of saber-toothed tigers and strange bears, escape from deathproof Tyrrell, who sleeps days in an impregnable cave and sups on Camilla's neck on various evenings? Will Cathy be brought out of the Miocene? Time in a spaghetti tangle. Starts well, ends comic-strippy.
Library Journal Review
From his lair in the Grand Canyon's mysterious depths, a vampire reaches out across time to entrap his victims. The author of The Dracula Tapes (Tor Bks., 1989) continues the adventures of his nosferatu detective, ``Mr. Strangeways,'' in this tale of time travel, missing persons, and an eccentric family. The horror aspects are downplayed in a story that concentrates on fast pacing and vampiric lore. Vampire fiction is always popular, and this title is a good selection for libraries already owning Saberhagen's other ``Dracula'' titles. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
