AUTHOR’S NOTE

This is the first proper children’s novel I have written, despite having begun many others over the years. It was a lot harder to write than I expected and quite a few people gave me encouragement to get it finished.

In particular, I would like to thank Dwina Murphy-Gibb for the many cups of coffee and fantastic suppers at the Sir Charles Napier, and for listening to me go on (and on) about Henry Hunter and Dolf, and always being interested.

To Ari Berk, doyen of all things mythic and folkloristic, for reading the first draft and being kind enough to tell me it was okay. (Part of the book was written in the little house we shared with our families in the Orkney Islands, and I hope that some of the fresh air and sea got in here somewhere.)

But my greatest thanks go, as always, to my family. To my wonderful wife Caitlín, for her tireless support when I was tearing my hair and declaring I would ‘never finish it’, and to our son Emrys, who kindly read the manuscript when he was busy performing in Guys and Dolls, and put me right on some of the ways twelve-year-old boys think.

Thanks also to Mark Ryan for the suggestion about exploding rocks.

Thanks must go to Amanda Wood from Templar, who took a chance on this after only seeing a few pages, and then stuck by me when it looked for a while as if the book would never be published, and to my two resolute editors, Helen Boyle and Catherine Coe, who wisely ignored my rants and persuaded me to listen to them. This is a much better book than it would have been without them.

For those who like to know such things, most of the places mentioned in Henry Hunter and the Beast of Snagov are real. I have taken some liberties with descriptions of the various castles – though several were exactly what I had imagined. There are no caves near Snagov that I am aware of, but the local people still talk of ‘Dracula’s Tomb’ in the nearby monastery ruins.

For those who love vampire tales and can’t get as far as Transylvania, I recommend a visit to the atmospheric town of Whitby, where Bram Stoker came in 1890 and where he gathered both locations and lore for his great novel Dracula. To the best of my knowledge there is no underground passage leading to the abbey ruins (though there could be), but all the rest of the details are as accurate as I could make them.