Doctor Reynard's Experiment (Idol Series)

Rating:
Summary: Victorian porn meets "Jekyl and Hyde".
Review: Victorian England is full of vulnerable young streetboys and servants. Enter an upper class doctor and his mysterious aristocratic friend. The pair show how even the best people can go to hell in a handbasket with the proper enticements. It's a quirky morality play in the style of Victorian underground porn, with the two sadists victimizing London a-la Jekyl and Hyde...two fairly cartoonish characters going straight to hell joined at the hip. The strongest and best written character is the young narrator, who is the special victim of the doctor. "Experiment" works on the hypothesis that nasty sex turns a gentleman into an unfeeling beast that must be destroyed, even if nasty sex also gets a gentleman indecently hot. 'In fact', thinks the doctor, 'this could be the sort of behavior that destroyed my late father'. Well, it's a bit melodramatic. But there are some juicy parts. Depending on your tastes, a plus or minus is the absolutely inhuman way the Hyde character entices the Jekyl character to abuse lower class boys during satanic rituals, impromptu non-surgical exams, and everyday prostitution. And the way the lower classes submit, it's hard to tell who's corrupting whom.