Barnabas, Quentin and the Scorpio Curse

This is a book that, at least in my opinion, doesn't really fit in with the other Barnabas books in this series. Barnabas is no longer a vampire yet there's no real explanation for what happened. Further, he's in a mental institution, having problems dealing with being normal and not being a vampire any more. I don't really see where he would have major problems with this.

He was normal before he became a vampire, he's highly intelligent and has had a lot of interactions with other people as any normal person would. I actually would see him as overjoyed that the curse was gone.

In this story a woman, Diana Collins, ends up in the same facility suffering from blackouts. Carol is her younger sister and is there to support her. One of the doctors that works there was worked at a concentration camp during the war so that's not saying much for the facility. There's one doctor that is very cruel, especially to her. There's various murders and Diana's sister tries to blame her for them. Quentin is involved (obvious from the title). Barnabas doesn't do a lot early in the book but becomes more active later.

It feels to me that this book is stretching things, trying to force-fit Diana's story into a Dark Shadows format when it doesn't really require Barnabas or Quentin as characters. I think this is the weakest of lal the Dark Shadows paperbacks I've read so far.