One of the enduring appeals of Bram Stoker’s Dracula comes not in the primary narrative, but in the sense that we’ve sunk hip deep into one corner of some kind of dark sandbox. There is a sense, looming over the whole novel, that Stoker’s dreaded vampire and his fearless vampire hunters are only a small part of a grander tapestry of the weird, which has, of course, fueled countless offshoots of the tale over more than a century.

The Fox and the Devil is Kiersten White‘s second go ’round with a Dracula riff (her novel Lucy Undying was the first), and while she’s clearly thought quite thoroughly and carefully about where the story could go next, this book is anything but a straightforward sequel to Stoker’s narrative. Instead, White looks closely at all those grains of sand in that vast, folkloric sandbox, picks out the shiniest one she can find, and weaves a story of her very own, a tale of the Van Helsing family that reaches far beyond Dracula and into a dark detective story with serious bite.

In the closing years of the 19th century, Abraham Van Helsing’s daughter Anneke finds a clue that could finally solve her father’s brutal death, a sign of the mysterious and beautiful woman she saw the night the elder Van Helsing died. By day, Anneke works as a consulting detective in Amsterdam, and by night she both cares for her agoraphobic mother and stews over her quest for vengeance. So when the mysterious woman resurfaces, she sets off on a journey across the European continent, eager to finally get closure for her entire family. What she finds instead is a dark web of secrets so thick that even Abraham Van Helsing might not have fully grasped it.

The winning twist here is that, despite knowing the strange circumstances of her father’s death, Anneke does not believe in the supernatural. Like her father was as a younger man, she is a scientist, a seeker of truth that she can observe and note and study. In her eyes, her father didn’t discover vampires in his later years, but spiralled into madness, keeping journals full of mythical creatures that do not, and never did, exist. Anneke’s journey, then, parallels her father’s own discovery that the world is darker, stranger, and more frightening than he could have imagined.

That might be enough for an interesting, if smaller, version of this story, but White does not stop there. The Fox and the Devil is an epic in every sense, an expansive historical mystery that’s also a twisted supernatural romance. Several times, the narrative reaches a place that might feel like a natural conclusion point for any other story, and White pushes further, giving Anneke new wrinkles to the mystery, new feelings with which to contend. It’s a novel that never lets go of its constantly expanding ambition, and while that does produce the occasional exposition-filled passage that threatens the pace a bit, White never loses her grip on the story.

White also never loses her grip on Anneke Van Helsing, a remarkable and engaging character who could easily carry several more paranormal mysteries on the strength of her voice, her wit, and her sense of adventure. Anneke’s relationship with her family, and her famous/infamous father, is complex and often surprising, but it’s her relationship with the phantom woman tied to Abraham’s death that drives the story. Their shared game is one of pursuit, but not entirely in service of violence or vengeance. There’s a romance budding somewhere in the depths of this story, and White’s ability to delicately dance through the conflicting emotions this brings out in her protagonist is one of the book’s great strengths.

What starts with a compelling first-person voice soon becomes a peek into a fully formed, often deeply conflicted yet endlessly brave new character. If Anneke returns in a future book, I will be thrilled. For now, though, if you love historical horror or you want a book that reinvents and expands the Van Helsing legacy like never before, The Fox and the Devil is a must read.

The Fox and the Devil is available now wherever you get your books.