Legend Of The Holyrood Vampires

Playing out in the week of Halloween 2013 on BBC Radio Scotland, Legend of the Holyrood Vampires was a Victorian vampire yarn set in Edinburgh in 1844.

It's 1844, the year of the Scott Monument's erection. Victoria Van Helsing - a 18th Century Buffy The Vampire Slayer - has returned to the city of her forebears to destroy the dreadful Grafin Von Schwartzbergen, a centuries-old vampire who seeks to turn Scotland's Capital into a city of dreadful night. (Working on the assumption that no one would really notice.)

As it's August in Auld Reekie, the only accommodation Victoria can find is in Madame MacLaverty's Tea and Sundries Parlour - a resort for many gentlemen callers who enjoy the odd apple charlotte or even a double éclair with its enthusiastic and limber girls.

Also in Edinburgh we find Hughie Strang, an Affliction Assessor. He travels the city in search of paupers so afflicted that they are deserving of assistance - it's sometimes tricky to find people sufficiently afflicted who aren't also dead... such is the stringent nature of the Victorian benefits system.

As more and more of the city's denizens become vampires, Hughie - who is terrified of women and who screams like a girl - finds himself caught up in Victoria's quest, being saved from certain death on a regular basis, fired from his job and inspected for vampire bites in a personal way.