The Black Crusade

The Black Crusade is a 2004 horror novel by Richard Harland. It is a prequel to Harland's earlier novel The Vicar of Morbing Vyle. It describes the journey of the hapless Basil Smorta, a multilingual bank clerk, who is forced into the company of a group of "fundamental Darwinists" by their imprisonment of the object of his undying love, Australian singer, Volusia, in a mobile iron box. The group travel across Eastern Europe during 1894, and encounter ghosts, blood donating vampires and other comic horror curiosities.