The Lesser Dead
By Christopher Buehlman
Berkley, $25.95
These days you can’t swing a dead bat without hitting a vampire. But before you swear off the toothsome undead, consider St. Petersburg author Christopher Buehlman’s gritty and engaging The Lesser Dead. It’s like literary Viagra for people burnt out on the vampire genre.
The story takes place in steamy, graffiti-painted, crime-ridden pre-Giuliani New York of 1978. Our guide through the urine-soaked subway dwellings of vampires is Joey Peacock, a brash, arrogant and horny 14-year-old with more swagger than he knows what to do with. Joey takes the reader back in time 45 years, to when Margaret, his family’s bawdy maid, turned him into an undead adolescent for eternity. Joey’s exchanges with Margaret and his Slavic professor pal Cvetko are infused with a familial intimacy that makes Buehlman’s monsters relatable between graphically detailed gruesome acts.
Buehlman’s vivid portrayals are facilitated by his character-building expertise as a professional actor. When the author of The Necromancer’s House and Those Across the River isn't writing, he's working Renaissance festivals and pubs across the U.S. as Christophe the Insultor — a verbal hitman for hire by revelers seeking a good laugh at a companion’s expense.
How much of his new book is influenced by Christopher/Christophe’s real-life interactions? “My characters, like real people, start with borrowed DNA but soon become individuals,” he tells CL in a recent interview. “If an aunt of mine, for example, lent a few traits to Irish vampire Margaret, these will have been exaggerated beyond recognition and married to other behaviors — I hope — that my aunt doesn’t share.”
Buehlman admits that he’s sometimes guilty of mentally casting film actors in certain roles, but would never reveal which performers he's thinking about. “I would be reluctant to inform readers,” he says, “lest I force too precise an image on them. Half the fun of reading books is imagining.”
Of course, speculations on the book being adapted to film are inevitable. “I have no trouble imagining The Lesser Dead as a movie. I write cinematically. I'm part of the first generation of writers who grew up with cable television, and that almost certainly influenced the way I tell stories.”
Casting Joey would be the biggest challenge. “Any actor I might imagine as perpetually adolescent Joey Peacock will be too old by the time the film shoots,” he says. “The character is technically 59, but he looks 14; it should be uncomfortable to watch him be sexual or violent, and casting anyone older than a very boyish 20-year-old will lose that.”
Buehlman isn’t counting out the possibility of seeing his new novel made into a movie, but isn’t holding his breath either.
“My books are represented for film and television purposes by the very capable Hotchkiss Agency in New York. I know The Lesser Dead is being actively shopped, but these things take time even for genre bestsellers, let alone for relatively undiscovered literary horror.”
Wordier Than Thou, CL Storytime and Barley Mow Brewing Company are teaming up to present Ghost Stories & Spooky Tales, which will feature actor Chris Holcom (Maxwell, Titus Andronicus and March of the Kitefliers) read from the work of his friend and local author Christopher Buehlman at Barley Mow Sat., Oct. 25, 7 p.m. There will also be candy, a raffle and a costume contest. Cost is $5. This event is sponsored by Creative Loafing.