Look, I’m all for DRACULA pastiches and historical thrillers in which famous writers serve as the protagonists, but I spent most of James Reese’s THE DRACULA DOSSIER asking myself, “When? When? When will this get good?”
The hero here is DRACULA creator Abraham Stoker, and just as that work was presented as a compilation of journal entries, so, too, is this novel, set in 1888. Through correspondence to others and himself, we see that Stoker — years away still from creating his most famous work — is in a bit of a slump, partially due to his loveless, sexless marriage. His life needs excitement. He gets in, albeit not in the form he necessarily wants.
But first, Stoker meanders around and has conversations and does a whole lot of nothing. Oscar Wilde’s family is visited, Deuteronomy is quoted, Robert Louis Stevenson is recommended, rituals are attended. His novelist pal Hall Caine introduces him to a man named Dr. Francis Tumblety. If that name sounds familiar — say, as one of the men suspected of being Jack the Ripper — that’s exactly the point behind the plot.
Stoker isn’t much fond of Tumblety. Although he finds the doc to exude a somewhat “mesmeric” influence, he thinks Tumblety to be a fool, and worse, one who wears “too-strong cologne.” He has even more reason to despise Tumblety when he learns of the doctor’s secret background, such as keeping a woman’s yellowed, diseased vagina in a jar. Home décor like that tend not to make you popular.
And so Stoker inevitably finds himself up against Jack the Ripper — this is not spoiling anything; it’s right there on the jacket — and thus finds inspiration for his vampire epic, right down to the demise. The playing with historical and literary figures is clever, but Reese’s downfall is not in making the text authentically Victorian, but for not giving Stoker anything to do for an enormous chunk.
DOSSIER’s entries are largely dry, displaying only occasional flashes of juice and jolts; these build as the plot picks up, but that doesn’t happen until a third of the book has passed. The many, many footnotes — annotated supposedly by whomever found these documents and sent them to publisher William Morrow — carry a voice of mocking, often lightning wit, but quickly prove to be a distraction.
This is not a book that is bad — just merely dull for too much of it. —Rod Lott
Related posts:
- The Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Dracula
- Q&A with THE NEW ANNOTATED DRACULA’s Leslie S. Klinger
- The New Annotated Dracula
- The Historian
- Blood Lines: Richard Matheson’s Dracula, I Am Legend, and Other Vampire Stories
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
This sounds very similar to a paperback original Robert Randisi had out a few years back. I beleive it was called Curtains of Blood and it involved Stoker getting mixed up with the Ripper case and using it as the inspiration for Dracula.
I thought the same thing, Cruikshank. It is indeed called CURTAINS OF BLOOD — Leisure put it out in 2002. I have it, but have not yet read it. I expect it would top DOSSIER.
Can’t say that I’ve heard of Curtains of Blood, but I can heartily recommend the Dossier.
My one nitpick: I did find the title to be just a tad misleading. Not totally so, because the connection does eventually become clear, but the first thirty pages or so left me wondering if they’d pasted the wrong cover on the book I was reading. I almost put it down at that point, but am so very glad that I stuck with it. Though it may seem to start slowly, the early pages lay a groundwork for the main character (Bram Stoker) and the events unfold at an ever-increasing pace.
If you read this book looking strictly for the Dracula connection, you’ll be disappointed. Be open to the author weaving a tapestry of a (fictional) pivotal point in big-hearted, likeable Stoker’s life, and this will be reading time well spent.
Loved it.