I couldn't find any decent cover art for this book, so have a gratituous portrait of the Earl of Rochester looking cynical at his monkey instead.

As I've said on repeated occasions, I'm not really into the horror genre. It just doesn't appeal to me, its tropes are alien, and, to be honest, I probably couldn't recognize good horror if it cut my head off and ate my heart with a fine merlot. I picked up Robert Holland's Deliver Us From Evil for one reason, one reason alone: it starred, as a secondary character, John Wilmot, the Earl of Rochester, the most bad-ass English poet who ever lived, and my personal hero. Quite frankly I'd read an empty yoghurt pot if there was half a chance of finding something about the Earl of Rochester at the bottom.

Deliver Us From Evil opens in Wiltshire, during the last days of Cromwell's Republic. Robert Vaughan (later Robert Lovelace) is the son of Captain John Foxe, a Parliamentarian officer investigating a series of ritualistic and gruesome murders. These are connected to a local Lord, a royalist sorcerer returning from banishment to continue being an evil bastard to the populace now that the restoration of Charles II is nigh. Needless to say, it all goes horribly wrong: Foxe is murdered, Robert's mother is burned alive, and his childhood sweetheart taken captive. Oh, and they raise the Devil, or at least some Force Of Great And Terrible Evil. Robert, however, is spared. He is discovered at Stonehenge by two beautiful vampires - the mysterious Milady and the quite frankly dodgy Lightborn - who introduce him to the court of Charles II. Robert's quest for vengeance leads him ever deeper into debauchery and the vampires own weird quest for a book to banish the evil summoned at Stonehenge.

Robert gets around a fair bit (his adventures to take him to London, to Prague and to the New World, to name but a few of the exotic historical locales), he meets more than a handful of major historical personages, including Milton, Aubrey, the Wandering Jew, John Dee in passing and, of course, the Earl of Rochester, and, naturally, as any historical character must, he gets caught up in some of the most memorable happenings of the day, including the plague and the fire of London. Given it's so rife with incident, the book is for the most part well-structured and pacey, but I must confess, that occasionally the intricacies of the plot are not quite as coherent as they could have been (or I am just a bit stupid) and some bits, especially bits with Lord Rochester in them (or I am just a bit biased) are more exciting than others. It's a little slow to kick off but, perhaps, necessarily so to build tension and dread, and also to show us precisely what Robert loses to turn him into the man he becomes. It also has a rather picaresque feel, as the reader is whirled from event to event, place to place, like a Restoration Tourist, with all the attendant advantages and disadvantages i.e. not the deepest book you'll ever read but, by G-d, the scenery is fine.

Not being really into the horror genre, I'm not quite sure how to evaluate Deliver Us From Evil. I didn't really feel horrified at any particular point, although I did occasionally think things were a bit grim. Nasty stuff happens to people (including the Earl of Rochester, alas!) over the course of the book and there's a general atmosphere of mystery and doom. I felt with the vampires there was an attempt to make them darkly sensual, since there is a rule somewhere that vampires cannot be anything other than darkly sensual. Lightborn is all about the boys and the hedonism (yay!) and Milady is obviously hot but I never really felt invested in their (un)lives or drawn to them. Characterisation is sketchy at best: Emily (Robert's childhood sweetheart) is virtuous and victimised, Lighborn is cynical and gay, Milady is loving and beautiful, and Robert undergoes what seems to be the typical horror hero's journey from ignorance to knowledge to vengeance to wisdom. The plot, equally, despite its twists and turns and occasional revelations, is also fairly standard fare: by the time we get there, sorting out that pesky ultimate evil is a piece of cake. On the other hand, Holland writes well and has clearly done his research. Ultimately, then, Deliver Us From Evil is reliably competent, and often rather fun.

However, let's be honest here: I read this book for the Earl Rochester. And how did Holland do? Pretty well, to be honest. I was sceptical, initially. The E of R is so cool on his own account that I didn't see how making him a vampire could contribute but Holland manages to weave the fragmentary events of Rochester's life plausibly into his own design. He applies his own spin to Rochester's disillusionment at court, his abduction of the heiress Elizabeth Mallet, his service in the wars with the Dutch, the five years he spent seemingly intoxicated and even his abrupt physical decline. Truthfully we don't really know what Rochester was like, there's so little of his life and works left to find, and his was legend even in his own lifetime, inspiring a host of imitations and literary homages. But Holland does a satisfactory job of constructing him into the Rochester we'd like him to be:

"It is said that cunts, like oysters upon rocks, fix upon the King that they may conjure up pearls."

Robert looked round. Two young men were standing by the Gallery wall, both dressed as he was in the height of fashion: one tubby and jovial looking [alas, poor Henry Savile, one slight rude letter from the Earl of Rochester and history forever remembers him as a fattie], the other tall, with refined, handsome looks. It was the second man who had spoken; and Robert was struck by the contrast with the matter of his words - for as his voice had been haunting, so also was his face. His eyes were hooded and his lips, soft and sensual; and yet there appeared something almost innocent in his expression, like a rebel angel undefaced by his fall."

I hope Holland found as much pleasure in writing his Rochester as I took in reading him. Whatever the flaws of Deliver Us From Evil, the presence in it of a successful Earl of Rochester must surely compensate for them. I'll leave you with my favourite Rochesterian moment:

Lord Rochester glanced around. He was still whoring. His expression was distant; for all the pleasure it betrayed he might have been practicing his fencing strokes. "I am bored by this fucking," he murmured...