Unambiguous and novel visions of good and evil

The trend of retelling old stories—in movies, books, and graphic novels—with the villains recast as misunderstood good guys and monsters as outcasts oppressed by a corrupt and hypocritical society continues unabated. Vampires, werewolves, witches, zombies, orcs, and name-brand villains like Cruella de Vil and the Wicked Witch of the West have all gotten this treatment. Even when evil is not being called good and good evil, in the now-rare event of a story treating monsters as monsters (like last year’s Nosferatu), the stories seldom match their depiction of evil with a more powerful, more appealing depiction of goodness.

Mercifully, there are exceptions. And none are better than Eleanor Bourg Nicholson’s historical horror series centering on Father Thomas Edmund Gilroy, a diminutive, pun-loving Dominican friar—and vampire slayer.

The first novel, published by Ignatius Press in 2018, is A Bloody Habit. Set in London during the final months of Queen Victoria’s reign, the novel follows a callow, striving young lawyer named John Kemp. After Kemp encounters terrifying, inexplicable violence on a train journey across Europe, he finds himself increasingly entangled with a world of ancient but hidden dangers centered on the arrival of a foreign nobleman.

Kemp and the Londoners of A Bloody Habit have been ill-prepared by post-Enlightenment modernity to deal with something like vampirism. Well-educated and polite, with a quintessentially Victorian agnosticism and casual anti-Catholic attitude, Kemp often refuses to acknowledge the evidence of his own eyes—seemingly the simplest act of empiricism. He takes some convincing, not just through the spreading terror wrought by the villain but through the slow, patient persuasion of Fr Thomas Edmund.

Critically, while unflinchingly portraying the story’s vampire as cruelly and gruesomely predatory, Nicholson offers a strong, clear, and convincing vision of what is at stake. Kemp’s beloved Esther, one of the objects of the villain’s attention, embodies Kemp’s hopes for love, success, and normal family life, and through Kemp’s friendships and connections, the reader comes to understand that vampirism threatens all of society. Kemp is, after all, a lawyer, working at the coalface of civilization.

But the strongest aspect of Nicholson’s vision of goodness is Fr. Thomas Edmund himself. Small, unassuming, overfond of puns and wordplay, and wearing the clerical garb that so often aroused suspicion or dismissal in Britain, he proves an easy character to scoff at but not an easy one to discourage or defeat. He has steel in him, and real physical courage disproportionate to his appearance. This, by example, works upon Kemp, and although Kemp is hardly yet a Christian by the end of A Bloody Habit, he has begun to change.

Brother Wolf takes place a few years later and concerns Athene Howard, the daughter of an American academic famous for using comparative literature and psychology to debunk religion. While sailing to Europe, Athene falls in with a strange trio she meets aboard ship—a recusant English nobleman, a nun, and the nun’s ward, a young woman with clairvoyant powers. The young woman is also a twin, and as Athene gets to know her better, she learns that this group is on a secret quest to find her twin brother, a Franciscan tormented by another supernatural evil—lycanthropy. He is a werewolf.

Where A Bloody Habit conveys the way sin undermines law and society, Brother Wolf explores the ways in which an even more fundamental building block—the family—can be turned toward evil. Unable to create, as so many great writers have pointed out, Satan corrupts. Not only does Athene begin the novel under the sway of her arrogant, resentful father, but the twin brother at the heart of the story has, through an evil he cannot shake off, become a danger to those he loves.

Neither novel offers an easy resolution—Father Thomas Edmund makes it clear that the effects of the fall and our own sin are not quickly undone—but both show clearly that goodness is real and more powerful than evil, even habitual, predatory evil.

In Wake of Malice, just published last fall, a sensationalist London newspaper dispatches Hugh Buckley, an Irish reporter, to his homeland to report on alleged embezzlement by the Jesuit priest in a quaint rural village. By the time he and Freddie Jones, his press photographer and best friend, arrive in Doolin, the situation has already become more serious. The priest’s chief accuser, a local bigwig and Church of Ireland member, has been murdered. The priest may be the obvious suspect, but he has an alibi, a cautious defender in Fr. Thomas Edmund, and no one can account for the most gruesome aspect of the crime—in addition to having his throat cut, the victim was partially devoured.

Wake of Malice has perhaps the largest cast and most intricately imagined setting of the series so far, which is fitting for a story so concerned with friendship and community. In the same way that good friendships strengthen the members and equip them for virtue—iron sharpening iron—bad relationships corrupt, and those who isolate themselves become most dangerous of all. Hugh and Freddie and Father Thomas Edmund and the accused, Father Michael Walsh, are set against the murder victim’s daughters, dangerous characters in the local village, and the old local ladies who are trying to revive pagan Celtic folklore and celebrate it in the church.

Who or what is responsible for the murders? Is it just local politics? A relict pagan cult? Or is it something far older that emerges from the caves beneath the moors at night?

Those who enjoy Gothic atmosphere—gaslit streets, full moons, windswept moorlands, big dark houses, old families with terrible secrets—will find something to love in all three novels. Nicholson creates and maintains palpably tense and moody settings, and the mysteries at the heart of each story unfold with maximum dread and suspense. That the stories take place in painstakingly realized historical periods provides yet another pleasure.

But the stories prove especially powerful because of the well-drawn, lifelike, and likable characters with which Nicholson has peopled them. Father Thomas Edmund, the only character to recur in all three books, is the best example, but each has a strong cast, all of whom have their own goals and worldviews, all of which clash and compete. This is compelling in all three novels, not only because pitting rival philosophies against each other works so well in horror fiction but because Nicholson has the rare gift of being able to make goodness attractive.

And, against the prevailing force of modern storytelling, Nicholson refuses to romanticize evil. The vampires, werewolves, and other monsters in her novels are evil—full stop. But all the characters facing them are fallen, too, and must reckon with evils they at first refuse to see and seek goodness beyond themselves if they are to defeat it.

The truth about sin and evil may shine through very occasionally from Hollywood or in modern fiction, but rarely, if ever, can the true nature of goodness and the workings of grace be portrayed as strongly and clearly. Nicholson, in three novels now, has accomplished both.

We should hope for a return to more clear-sighted, unambiguous visions of evil from pop culture.

But in the meantime, we should look forward just as much to the next Father Thomas Edmund Gilroy adventure.

A Bloody Habit: A Novel
Ignatius Press, 2018
Paperback, 440 pages

Brother Wolf: A Novel
Chrism Press, 2021
Paperback, 352 pages

Wake of Malice: A Novel
Chrism Press, 2024
Paperback, 300 pages