"TWO SMALL PUNCTURE MARKS WHERE?"
As an added treat, I'm going to take a looky look at my booky book of the 6th book in THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. paperback book series. Now, I'm pretty sure I've never seen a single episode of the TV show but when I saw the chance to get a copy of this near-mint paperback from 1966 that involved apparently VAMPIRES, it was a total no-fanger . . . er no brainer. I mean, just look at that back cover blurb in blood red ink . . . . well, actually it's in magenta but hey, this was the sixties. That back cover synopsis does a good job giving you the entire set-up. Napoleon & Illya's boss man Waverly calls them into his office after receiving this message from Hungary which at first is taken as a joke. However, Waverly decides to send his reluctant but game agents to Transylvania to check out why agent Carl Endros ended up dead in a snowy forest of an apparent suicide by gunshot.
Endros was not the type to kill himself and his body is actually completely drained of blood with two puncture marks on his neck. The 2 men from U.N.C.L.E. fly to Europe and end up in the Transylvanian Alps in an area nicely described as not totally behind the Iron Curtain but definitely in one of its outer folds. Nappy and Illya are assisted by a Bucharest agent named Hilda Eclary as well as local Romanian official Colonel Hanevitch. Along they way, they keep meeting a Romanian man named Zoltan who is constantly being stalked and intimidated by local mobs. They seem to hate Zoltan for some reason and want him to get lost. Could it have something to do with Zoltan's last name being 'Dracula'??? Zoltan insists on proving his innocence by going to church and taking communion. Napoleon and Illya, while looking around the forest location of Endros' death, find themselves there after the sun goes down and seemingly surrounded by howling wolves (which are not found in the area). As they seek shelter in a hidden cave, they encounter a strange man in a cloak who seems to somehow control the wolves and send them away.
This man, it later turns out, is named Vlad Tsepesh (sic) Stobolzny, Zoltan Dracula's five-times great-grandfather who supposedly died in 1704 but "...there were rumors he was a demon." While in his hotel room, Napoleon sees a huge, dark figure of a bat with a glaring, human face standing outside his window. Trouble is, he's on the third floor. Napoleon hurls a silver pitcher at the wraith, smashing the window and sending the bat-like creature apparently upwards. Meanwhile down below in the street, Illya has returned and, at the sound of the crash, looks up to also see a huge, bat-like figure hovering outside the window and he fires his gun at it to no affect. Solo goes to the local library to research vampiry stuff and the librarian points out another American who is also looking at the same type of books. Imagine my surprise when the other American is described as "With a light mustache and slightly receding hairline, he resembled a fuller-faced Vincent Price. The other man introduces himself as having just been in Trieste at a sci-fi film festival and his name is Forrest J Ackerman!!!! That's right, folks. Somehow, someway, Uncle Forry has been inserted into a MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. paperback novel!!! Now THAT'S what I call a twist I never saw coming!
I had a lot of fun with this slim paperback; all the time thinking 'Is this going to end up being a real vampire or will there be a Scooby-Doo rational explanation at the end'? I'll leave that for you to find out for yourself as this novel seems pretty easy (and cheap) to get your claws on. The yellowed pages and the distinctive 'old paperback' smell of the book took me back to my childhood days when my grandfather used to take me to the Pennsauken Mart. There I would load up on comic books (with the covers torn off) as well as old paperbacks (some with the covers torn off but most with covers intact). This is where I would've probably come across this very paperback MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. book and I'm surprised I never did! This is the same place I picked up several of those PARTRIDGE FAMILY mystery paperbacks and MAD MAGAZINE reprint paperback books and they had TONS of these kind of old paperback novel series and detective novels. Even if I never saw it there, THE VAMPIRE AFFAIR takes me right back in time!
P.S. The 2 phots up there are from the MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. episode "The Bat Cave Affair" which I've never seen but probably should.
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