Mark Collins Jenkins

Vampire Forensics is an entertaining book filled with factoids that attempts to explore the history of vampires. Mark Collins Jenkins cites folklore, literary characters (e.g. Dracula), anthropological, archaeological, medical (e.g. rabies, plague victims, funerary practices) and other scientific research in his search for the origins of the vampire legends. The organizational structure of the book is somewhat erratic making the path to the origin of the vampire legend somewhat obscure. This is not a chronological history of any means. There is also very little real forensics work cited in this book, despite the title. In addition, the author never draws a firm conclusion and the book rather peters out. Despite these flaws, this book is a rather interesting collection of historical anecdotes and perceptions of the dead and not-so-dead.
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I did enjoy this book as pleasurable reading material so I am giving it a high rating. If you are after an academic account of the origins of vampire mythology, this book does not deliver, despite the interesting bibliography. The writing style is more suited to a series of magazine articles and is quite verbose and overly descriptive. Whilst this stops it from being too dry, it does detract from what the author is trying to say. There are many interesting anecdotes and snippets of folklore that are food for thought. Read if you are interested in vampires and are not after a scholarly review. I have used the bibliography to seek out a few interesting sounding reads.… (más)