Once upon a time, circa 1897, vampires were scary monsters. They challenged social mores and threatened to erode the nation’s fabric.

Now, they’re metrosexuals with issues. Or so it might seem if one peruses the shelves at any half-decent book store.

Romance and crime have been as insidiously invaded by the undead as England was by Dracula in Bram Stoker’s genre-spawning tale.

The vampire, once the subtle foe spreading invasion, contagion and unfettered lust through the God-fearing western world, has, at least in the past 30 years, become the hero of genre fiction.

Anne Rice investigated the price of immortality at the same time as she destroyed gender boundaries in 1985’s Interview with the Vampire, repeating the dose ad nauseum in her Vampire Chronicles. Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s Saint-Germain was something of a champion detective, debuting in 1978 (Hotel Transylvania) as a righter of human wrongs throughout history. Yarbro is to visit Australia in 2009 at a guest of the Continuum convention in Melbourne.