Books: Delicious historical novel

Having been caught up in this debut novel’s enthralling atmosphere of detective story, scholarly mystery, lush travelogue, Gothic drama and burgeoning romance, it seems almost over-the-top to mention that, oh yeah, it’s about Dracula, too.

But put away your garlic — we’re talking about the real Dracula, the historical figure known as Vlad Tepes, the Impaler. Malicious and cruel yet scholarly and devout, Tepes was revered as a patriot by his countrymen for his bloody victories against the encroaching Ottoman Empire. Of course, strange stories sprang up around the death of such a powerful, revered and, above all, feared man — surely such a legend couldn’t just die in the normal old way?

For the young narrator, however, history doesn’t want to stay in the past. Like her father before her and his mentor before him, she is becoming slowly convinced that Vlad Tepes is still alive, and even worse, somehow interested in her — and that there is more truth in those old folk myths than she could ever want to know.

It is a mystery revealed piece by piece, over generations and continents, handed down in secret. The reader travels back and forth through decades tracing the search. We visit the real Transylvania, beautiful and poverty-stricken, overlaid with Cold War intrigue; history-soaked Istanbul, where the last vestiges of the Ottoman Empire thrive amidst centuries of civilized splendor; and remote medieval monasteries where life has barely changed in 500 years. In Kostova’s hands, these locales are not just vague forested set-pieces, they are characters in their own right.

“The Historian” will entrance any reader who enjoys a complex historical mystery written in gorgeous, evocative prose, whether or not they consider themselves “into vampires.”