Journal Entry 1 by jennymidget from Bellbowrie, Queensland Australia on Sunday, August 22, 2010

At a slump in his writing career and feeling dwarfed by his charismatic, successful boss Sir Henry Irving, Bram Stoker returns to London from a business trip in the summer of 1888 determined to turn his life around.

One night after a performance, Stoker takes a stroll through the streets of Whitechapel--an impoverished district of London known for the its many "bang-tails," or prostitutes, as well as its police and the citizenry crowding its shadowy alleys--when he thinks he recognizes an acquaintance, a hack-job American "doctor" named Francis Tumbelty. But that same evening in Whitechapel the crime spree of the century begins--Jack the Ripper kills his first victim, a local prostitute. To clear his own name Stoker enlists some of his illustrious friends, including Walt Whitman, Lady Jane Wilde (mother of Oscar), and the million-copy-selling Victorian novelist Sir Thomas Henry Hall Caine. When they discover that the murder weapon is a bowie knife, Stoker no longer doubts that the elusive American surgeon he saw weeks ago is the very same man terrorizing and taunting London as Jack the Ripper.

Trouncing from Manhattan to London′s West End and Whitechapel, from Dublin to a ritualistic denouement in Edinburgh, this sweeping, magnificent novel is a suspenseful trip into the heart of literature and history, as Stoker goes on the "true" adventure that will inspire him to write Dracula.  

Journal Entry 2 by jennymidget at Bellbowrie, Queensland Australia on Tuesday, August 24, 2010

I thought this was very interesting - Stoker himself, I think, would have approved of the journal entry/letter style, it's very much (probably intentionally) like Dracula itself is.
Reese has obviously done his research, as the historical detail is particularly excellent, and I found it sufficiently suspenseful for me to keep on reading (even though the footnotes were a little interruptive.)
The main downside was, in fact, the whiny depressed self-pitying tone Stoker took on at times, I found it quite grating in parts (guess I don't like thinking about the author of my favourite book like that!) But it wasn't enough to stop me from reading, I did enjoy "The Dracula Dossier" and am glad I picked it up!

Off to the Philippines via BookMooch.