Bloody Streets. Billy Helston

Ripperologist NO 151 
Ripper Fiction Reviews. DAVID GREEN

London Vampire: Bloody Streets Billy Helston

I felt I needed another fix from this fascinating writer, so I hunted down this dark, sensuous little vampire tale set in London during the time of the Jack the Ripper murders.

Master George returns home suddenly from a European tour suffering from an unspecified illness. He retreats to his bedroom with the curtains drawn against the daylight. But the contagion/infection spreads like a lurgy among the servants: first Eliza, then William… and in Whitechapel, women are being feasted upon and drained of their blood…

It’s the voluptuousness of the prose that lifts this story above the commonplace. Potent images of sensory gratification are set alongside scenes of death and bodily decay. I was reminded of Tanith Lee – the same decadent sensibility, the same exquisite blend of myth, Gothic horror, and erotic supernatural fantasy. The finest passages in the book are the most lusciously perverted and the most horribly gruesome. Everything dribbles and throbs with abnormal lust! Fingers are plunged into pots of strawberry jam and veins haemorrhage onto fresh white sheets. Meanwhile, Buck’s Row and Hanbury Street fall prey to the beautiful biting machines.

 A delicious piece of macabre fiction.