I decide I owe a debt to Stoker

"Dracula" is the third selection in my online scifi/fantasy class. I read it about 30 years ago, and, while it has its exciting moments, it's about 100 pages too long. However, Bram Stoker's novel pulled together myriad vampire lore and created the "rules" for writing stories in which vampirism stands for any number of characters in society who are selfish and inhuman, from the gold-digger "vamp" to modern day Wall Street characters who suck money, life, and hope from unwitting investors. So here's paper #3:

Bram Stoker's Dracula is the sourcebook for virtually every popular culture vampire story that came later, from Nosferatu to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. More recently, Charlie Houston's vampire-noir novels rework Stoker's lore just enough to create a compelling and sympathetic anti-hero.

In Houston's novels, a virus causes vampyrism (Houston's use of the alternate spelling cues readers to expect something different). So Houston's world lacks Stoker's supernatural elements. Vampyrism merely destroys all other diseases, giving the infected super immunity rather than immortality. Houston's vampyres can see themselves in mirrors, eat garlic, cannot turn into animals, and are not affected by holy water or crosses. (A small group of vampyres, the Enclave, does believe they can become true immortals by fasting from blood, but other vampyres view them as religious nuts.)

However, Houston retains much of Stoker's lore: Vampyrism is transmitted by bites. The infected must feed the virus with new blood. Wounds heal within minutes or hours, so vampyres can only be killed by quick decapitation or "explosion" of heart or brain. The virus renders vampyres so sensitive to sunlight that direct exposure will cause immediate death from skin cancer. Just as Dracula chooses to live in London, where he can feed inconspicuously, Houston's vampyres stick to New York City, where unconscious junkies can be siphoned intravenously and won't notice another track mark. Joe Pitt, the novel's hero, a rogue detective/fixer, lives in a tiny, windowless basement apartment accessed from the floor above through a trapdoor--reminiscent of a coffin lid. Houston's slang, taken directly from Dracula, needs little explanation. For example, his vampyres cultivate Lucys and contend with Van Helsings, 

Overall, the vampire-noir genre blending makes Pitt  fresh and interesting. Noir heroes like Sam Spade are hard-boiled loners, often ciphers. Dracula is tortured, but too predatory and cruel to elicit full sympathy. However, vampyrism as a disease that isolates Pitt makes him both more accessible than Spade, more human than Dracula.