The best books on the Gothic-espionage connection

The king of vampires, and arguably the king of Gothic, Bram Stoker’s Dracula is, at minimum, a classic representation of the Gothic. It is also an espionage tale underneath.

Although not elaborated in great detail (it is however, in the Swedish translation/interpretation of Dracula, titled Powers of Darkness), Count Dracula has a world domination plot he intends to enact. The details are vague but do seem to involve the numerous coffins he has placed around London. Are these all for him or for the legion of the undead he is creating, starting with female protagonist Mina Harker’s best friend Lucy?

Other espionage elements mixed in are main protagonist Jonathan Harker’s trip to Transylvania as a solicitor for the mysterious Count Dracula. In the espionage story sense, his “mission” as a solicitor could have been a cover (like James Bond) or truer to the Harker character, an innocent man caught in the web of a spy plot (as in Richard Hannay of The Thirty-Nine Steps). Like Bond and many other spy characters, Harker also finds himself imprisoned by his insincerely polite host.

Then there’s Mina’s own spying, which is essentially psychic in nature, having been derived from her connection to Dracula after being bitten and taken under his thrall. Finally, the climax involves a suspenseful chase across land and sea for the final confrontation.

Dracula is a perfect example of the tropes of both genres mixing and interacting to create a driving memorable storytelling filled with horror, action, and suspense.

A man is sent to visit a mysterious count in his secluded mountaintop fortress, where a diabolical plot unfolds, involving an attack on England using his Angels of Death, women under his hypnotic command. The man finds himself slowly becoming a prisoner, leading to his planning an escape and a race to stop the Count’s plot from unfolding.

Sound familiar? It is, essentially, the plot of Dracula. It is also the plot of Ian Fleming’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the tenth James Bond novel. If Count Dracula is the king of vampires, then James Bond is inarguably the king of spies.

Mary Shelly’s Gothic classic also shares many common spy elements, which is interesting as, due to its film representations and pop culture status, long been a companion/bookend to Dracula.

While the spy connections aren’t as strong as in some of my other selections, there are other aspects that do qualify it, the international travel being part of it. From the “megalomaniacal villain with a conspiratorial plot” side of things, it could be taken that Victor Frankenstein’s desire to create a new race that would look to him as its creator echoes some of what would later become a supervillain or even Nazi-type trope.

The Monster does plenty of spying of his own throughout, from the benign spying on the family he learns from and helps for a time, to spying on Frankenstein and his attempts to create a bride for the monster and other points along the way. In addition, there are numerous murders and frameups which involve conspiracies of a more intimate nature between Victor and the Monster, as well as a chase between the two leading to the climax.

A precursor to Dracula, and largely forgotten today in the mainstream, the globe-hopping adventures of Varney bring to mind many spy adventure tales.

In this novel, one of the original “penny dreadfuls” the episodic tone (due to its original publication as a continuing weekly serial from 1845-1847), contributes to the espionage feel, especially as Varney takes on a cover as “Baron Stolmuyer Saltsburgh” in order to further his activities.

Also notable is, among the other vampiric Gothic traits displayed by Varney, he is also able to be revived by moonlight, a trope which is now more attributed to werewolves.

Spies, a mysterious death with what could be construed as a “ghostly” sighting, and an atmosphere that could be considered modern Gothic. This is the setup of Graham Greene’s The Third Man.

Under the backdrop of darkness and devastation which was still lingering in postwar Vienna, Greene shows it as a once beautiful city cast in a foggy pall, the cursed cloud of death hanging over it, which also happens to the characters in the story. The Third Man mixes the dread of Gothic and the unfolding suspense and paranoia involving the shadowy people in a shadowy world of espionage in a memorable, haunting fashion.