The Dracula Dossier by James Reese

Abraham, or Bram Stoker is a manager for the famous actor Henry Irving and the theatre company he heads. While he has to put up with the tempermental actor's tantrums and commands, he also enjoys with him a close friendship, as well as with the other leading lights of creative Victorian society, such as Speranza Wilde, wife of William Wild and mother of Oscar and Victor Wilde.

It's Bram's friendship with another man, Hall Caine, that brings the maager and later writer into a too close encounter with Jack the Ripper and even puts him under suspicion from Detective Abberline of the Metropolitan Police.

Caine sends Bram a letter saying that a friend of his from America, Francis Tumblety, a doctor, is soon to visit London and asks, on the basis of their friendship, that Bram show the man around and make him welcome. Bram soon does so, but almost instantly regrets it, as Tumblety makes himself home at the Lyceum theatre and brings his two dogs with him, which quickly make nuisances of themselves and leave evidence of their visits in the wardrobe room, making him no friends with the wardrobe mistress.

In short, Bram quickly finds Tumblety a drag on him, and though he begs Hall Caine in letters to tell him more about his "friend", Caine doesn't answer any letters. When Tumblety overhears Constance Wilde offer Bram membership in the Order of the Golden Dawn, he somehow inveigles an invitation also. But during their induction ceremony, something goes wrong, and one of the Egyptian Gods, Set or Sutekh, somehow invades Tumblety's body and soul, and only Bram appears to have seen, noticed or remembered it.

Before long, Tumblety is haunting Stoker and soon Bram comes to realize, murdering prostitutes in Whitechapel and removing their hearts and other parts... and he's trying to embroil Bram in the murders, leaving blood, body parts and other such "presents" for his former acquaintance. With no one else to turn to, Bram enlists Speranze Wilde and Hall Caine to track Tumblety down and deal with him before he can kill any more prostitutes.

But despite their every effort, Tumblety easily evades them, killing and murdering and dismembering women seemingly at will. As more and more women die, Bram and his friends are forced to resort to ever more distasteful acts to cover their tracks and deal with Tumblety. But how can they deal with a God of Evil given human form. Will they ever be able to bring him down?

I picked up this book because it was a historical mystery, which I usually love, and involved Bram Stoker, writer of Dracula. The story purports that Stoker used the experiences he had in this book as the inspiration for Dracula, and makes mention that Bram is suspected of being the Ripper.

Well, that last isn't exactly the truth. If Bram was suspected of being the Ripper by Inspector Abberline, even for a short time, he never says so, and he doesn't put Bram to really hard questioning. In fact, Abberline seems to realize that Tumblety is the Ripper, to the point of wanting to ask him some very pointed questions, but never catches up with him.

I expected a book full of thrills and chills and mad chases and terror. What I got was... meh. The book is not thrilling at all, and the chills are few and far between. The writing is turgid and often seemed to move at a snail's pace while I waited impatiently for something to happen. And even though Tumblety is the villain and the Ripper, I didn't find him to be very menacing. In fact, Bram seems rather, weak and nervous for little reason through much of the novel.

What was nice were the annotated notes throughout the text, which illustrated points or talked about the historical characters introduced throughout the novel. But in the whole, I found the book a chore rather than a pleasure to read. I would not buy it, nor recommend it to others. Look elsewhere if you want a genuinely good, exciting read.