Bram Stoker, Meet Jack the Ripper

John Thomason - Florida Sun-Sentinel

Before he became the famed author of "Dracula," Victorian writer Bram Stoker was a lowly theater gofer, doing the drudgery for Shakespearean titan Henry Irving at his Lyceum Theatre. In the process, Stoker would correspond with Walt Whitman and meet other literary greats such as Oscar Wilde, William Butler Yeats and Hall Caine.

He also became an instant nemesis to the man many historians consider to be Jack the Ripper.

It's this connection between a pre-"Dracula" Stoker and an emerging Ripper that forms the catalyst for "The Dracula Dossier," a suspense fiction grounded in exhaustive factual research, which hit stores yesterday. Florida author James Reese, known for his best-selling Herculine trilogy about witchcraft, structures his book as a series of journal entries and letters written by Stoker in 1888 and which came into Reese's possession after being sold at a Sotheby's auction.

While a collection of miscellaneous Stoker material was auctioned in the early 20th century, the journal was not among it, and every word in "The Dracula Dossier" is, eloquently, Reese's.

"It's fun to try to fit my imagination to the contours of history," said Reese, who will discuss the book at Delray's Murder on the Beach Oct. 15. "Some readers need to know what's fictional and what's true, and a book like mine might frustrate those readers. But as I say, 'Almost everything is true.' Fictional license is not something I exercise often."

To ensure historical realism, Reese drew from at least nine books by and about Stoker, Wilde, Caine and especially the Order of the Golden Dawn, a secret society which provides the backdrop for the novel's most demonic passages.

Reese was never a die-hard lover of Stoker, and the novel's genesis spawned from a general inquisitiveness about the "Dracula" scribe.

"It started with casual reading, when I realized I didn't know enough about Stoker," he said. "So I started reading biographies for my own enjoyment. I didn't know he worked so deeply in the theater. I didn't know so many famous people passed through his life. It wasn't until the third biography where finally somebody mentioned he crossed paths with the Ripper suspect.

"I didn't ever set out to write around Jack the Ripper. I wanted to explore Stoker's creative process."

Like most writers, Reese said he personally relates to his main character, particularly in the time period in which the story takes place.

"I do relate in that he's my age as the book takes place, and he's struggling to create, which we all do," Reese said.

Understanding that the amount of information conveyed in "The Dracula Dossier" may be overwhelming for anyone not schooled in Victorian literature and Egyptology, Reese's myriad contemporary footnotes provide both essential assistance and entertaining levity to the narrative action.

Sometimes they even contradict Stoker's journal, a fun way for Reese to play with his own unique form.

"I wanted to add another voice, a contemporary voice, to the book," he said. "I wanted the reader, having finished the book, to have a sense of Stoker's biography. Trying to get that into the narrative was too cumbersome."

A native New Yorker, Reese nonetheless captures the long-winded dialogue of Victorian England with witty precision, often using two lines to explain what could be said in two words.

"Not only do I not enjoy writing in Hemingwayesque, declarative staccato sentences, but the book is suited to a manuscript that's supposed to have been written in that period."

To that point, it may be wise to read "The Dracula Dossier" with a dictionary nearby, as the book provides stimulation for the brain as well as tingles for the spine.

"For me, it's less of an experience if I get through a book and don't learn a word," he said.

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