I was slightly surprised to discover that I hadn't read this, being as I'm such a fan of Newman's work, but there you go. It's probably been a the bottom of a box of books somewhere for the last ten years or so. Anyway, this is back from when, as Jack Yeovil, Kim Newman was writing for the Games Workshop, a series of novels and stories set in the Warhammer universe. By the by, here's Stephen Baxter's fascinating account about how a small group of young writers who had been published in Interzone in the eighties came to write tie-in novels for Games Workshop, with all sorts of interesting results: http://www.vectormagazine.co.uk/article.asp?articleID=42

Anyway, Genevieve Undead is a series of three novellas, featuring the eponymous heroine, a six-hundred year old vampire in a sixteen year old body. The first, Stage Blood, sees an artifact of the evil Drachenfels - defeated in the book of the same name - set out to avenge the dark lord. Genevieve's human lover Detlief, a playwright and actor, has just begin a run of his dark new play, much to the approval of the audience and the Trapdoor Daemon, a phantom-like figure who haunts Detlief's theatre. Newman's literary playfulness is in full force here. The setting of the Warhammer universe is a Germanic Mittle-European 17th century sort of place, and the play is 'The Strange History Of Dr Zhiekhill and Mr Chaida.' Cue lots of troubled angsting about man's dark side and the evil within, while the poor hideous Trapdoor Daemon clings to his innate humanity and the artifact bears down on our cast, bringing out the worst inside whoever it touches.

The Cold Stark House takes the literary games to a whole new level as Genevieve is trapped in a remote, crumbling old house to become part of a horrible family who plot, steal, poison and kill each other in endless, bloody variations of the most insane, twisted, gothic melodramas. The arrival of a revolutionary on the run and a courtesan help break the spell, but it may be too late for all of them.

Unicorn Ivory is the final story. Genevieve is inveigled into a plot to assassinate a political rival, something she is initially reluctant to do. Graf Rudiger, however, turns out to be exactly the sort of person who needs a bit of killing, and Genevieve tags along as he takes his party on a unicorn hunt. The story twists and turns and reverses and tables are turned and humans and vampires become the prey as Genevieve and Rudiger match hunting skills in a deadly game.

This is a quick read: fast-paced, intelligent gory fun. Genevieve proved to be such a compelling character that Newman uses no less than two more alternative versions in his Anno Dracula series and his Diogenes Club series. It'd be interesting to see him return her to the fantasy setting from whence she sprang for another couple of stories, but then it'd be also great to see the Dark Future series finished, and neither seem likely, which is a pity.