Curtains of Blood

Rating:
Summary: FUN AND FASCINATING
Review: Bram Stoker and Jack the Ripper, together again for the first time? Sounds promising, but this rather short novel goes nowhere with the concept. The Ripper consults Stoker several times for no reason that makes sense, and Stoker is--- we are told--- simultaneously fascinated by the Ripper as a prototype of the vampiric Count who is just beginning to take nebulous shape in his notes and imagination, but nothing that Stoker actually does or says, or that the Ripper says or does, in any way reflects this.

All the characters, whether named Stoker, Conan Doyle, or Oscar Wilde, speak in almost precisely the same voice, and with a 1990s US rather than 1880s British vocabulary. Stoker, again for no reason that makes any real sense, starts out as a self-appointed detective hoping to "solve" the Ripper killings, quickly has a red herring dragged across the trail as he fears his idol and mentor Sir Henry Irving is the guilty party, and then abandons his investigation completely not quite halfway through the novel. The Ripper himself never actually steps onto the stage, and we learn basically nothing about him other than that he might feel a kind of spiritual kinship to old Vlad Tepes himself.

Basically, it's a tease and a cheat, a sort of outline of a novel that seemed to hit writer's block fairly early on. There is no sense of time or place, the characters are interchangeable, and nothing whatsoever happens within the framework of the novel other than the historical events we know so well, and which have nothing whatsoever to do with Bram Stoker.

I'd say, give this one a miss.

Rating:
Summary: Amateurish and undeveloped
Review: Bram Stoker and Jack the Ripper, together again for the first time? Sounds promising, but this rather short novel goes nowhere with the concept. The Ripper consults Stoker several times for no reason that makes sense, and Stoker is--- we are told--- simultaneously fascinated by the Ripper as a prototype of the vampiric Count who is just beginning to take nebulous shape in his notes and imagination, but nothing that Stoker actually does or says, or that the Ripper says or does, in any way reflects this.

All the characters, whether named Stoker, Conan Doyle, or Oscar Wilde, speak in almost precisely the same voice, and with a 1990s US rather than 1880s British vocabulary. Stoker, again for no reason that makes any real sense, starts out as a self-appointed detective hoping to "solve" the Ripper killings, quickly has a red herring dragged across the trail as he fears his idol and mentor Sir Henry Irving is the guilty party, and then abandons his investigation completely not quite halfway through the novel. The Ripper himself never actually steps onto the stage, and we learn basically nothing about him other than that he might feel a kind of spiritual kinship to old Vlad Tepes himself.

Basically, it's a tease and a cheat, a sort of outline of a novel that seemed to hit writer's block fairly early on. There is no sense of time or place, the characters are interchangeable, and nothing whatsoever happens within the framework of the novel other than the historical events we know so well, and which have nothing whatsoever to do with Bram Stoker.

I'd say, give this one a miss.

Rating:
Summary: Endless mistakes
Review: Bram Stoker vs. Jack the Ripper? Unbelievable mistakes abound. For one thing, it was Richard Mansfield, not Henry Irving, who was playing in "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" during the Ripper killings and was only briefly a suspect. For another, Doyle published "A Study in Scarlet" in "Beaton's Christmas Annual", not "Pearson's". If an author is going to drop names all over the place he should at least check his facts. There's also a line about James Barrie writing about fairies, but "Peter Pan" wasn't created until 1902 (the play came in 1904). All these errors came before page 80, I stopped counting after that!

Rating:
Summary: That's EDWARD Hyde, by the way...
Review: I love period pieces and when it's a horror story or thriller so much the better. Randisi starts with an interesting concept but unfortunately can take it no further than that. The result is a sometimes enjoyable read that ultimately let me down. Part of the fun of reading Jack The Ripper novels is finding out who the author will finger as the likely perpetrator. No such thing here which is not necessarily a bad thing but in the end the book adds up to nothing but a gimmicky tease peppered with real historical characters.
There are two flaws to this book that deserve special mention. One is the complete lack of physical description. No attempt is made to actually put the reader into 1880's London. One of the reasons anyone picks up a period piece is to experience the sights, sounds and even smells of another place and time. Randisi made no attempt whatsoever on this count. The result is a period piece without a period!
The other flaw is to some perhaps a minor one as far as the telling of the story goes but in this genre it is in my book darn near unforgivable. Again and again the character of Mr. Hyde in Stevenson's book is referred to as "Henry" Hyde. Uh, Robert, don't you mean EDWARD Hyde? That no editor even caught this cringeworthy mistake is positively amazing. Draw your own conclusions.
A better use of your time if you're interested in Ripper lore is Patricia Cornwell's "Portrait Of A Killer." Deeply flawed itself, perhaps, it is infinitely better as far as immersing the reader in late 19th Century London. And there is no "Henry" Hyde, either. I promise.

Rating:
Summary: FUN AND FASCINATING
Review: So many Jack The Ripper novels tell the same story over and over. Robert J. Randisi has given us a novel that is both fresh and fun. Most folks know that in addition to writing novels such as DRACULA, Bram Stoker also ran a theater. As CURTAINS OF BLOOD opens, his theater is in danger of closing. To make the play now on stage, Stoker manages to meet the Ripper and get the beast's take on murder--from a killer's point of view. Stoker hopes to enhance the play's authenticity by incoporating these insights. Quite a premise. And Randisi lives up to it, giving us a Victorian London that is as spooky as the house in THE SHINING, and introducing us to many famous people, include Oscar Wilde. CURTAINS OF BLOOD is both fun and fascinating and a great addition to theRipper library.