The Vampire of Ropraz

Inspired by a true story, Chessex's crime novella offers a sobering appraisal of human superstition and prejudice. In 1903, the ghoulish desecration of several women's graves in the rural Swiss village of Ropraz leads locals to intuit a vampire's handiwork. Suspicion falls on Charles-Augustin Favez, a brutish farmhand with a history of alcoholism and lewd behavior. Though no accusations hold up against him in court, Favez is imprisoned: he makes the perfect defenseless scapegoat onto whom citizens in the backward community project their own “shameful secrets.” In measured prose that studiously sidesteps sensationalism, Chessex (L'Ogre ) recounts the alternating repulsion and fascination that Favez stimulates in the many persons involved with his case, all of whom vampirically exploit him to satisfy their own needs. The book concludes with a wonderfully mordant speculation on Favez's fate after he escapes prison and joins the French army during WWI. (Apr.)