"From Heck":
A Review of Robert J. Randisi's Curtains of Blood
Randisi, Robert J. Curtains of Blood. New York, NY: Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc, 2002. 351p.
There is an question at the center of Curtains of Blood that is ripe for investigation: "To what extent did Jack the Ripper's nasty little romp inspire Bram Stoker's Dracula?" Did the Whitechapel murders, and the blood-stained fiend responsible, ignite the bookish Stoker's questioning mind? Could this have been the trigger that inspired his delving into the darkest impulses of his fellow Man? There should be, it seems from a safe distance, enough evidence to be found to at least make the discussion lively, if not prove the point; there can't be any less than Patricia Cornwell had in presenting her own Ripper investigation. Even if presented as fiction--which is really the only honest way to tackle the long-since mythologized serial killer--this is an intriguing concept. In the right hands, the story of Bram Stoker's amateur investigation into the Ripper killings could easily parallel his later investigation of the collision of civility and savagery.
To be blunt, Randisi's are not the right hands. What he has crafted fluctuates wildly between a Z-grade monster movie and a Columbo movie of the week, replete with star-studded cameos.
The flaw at the center of all of this lies in Randisi's inability to fully incorporate the historical personages who walk in-and-out of the story into his fictional world. There are constant reminders that these characters were real people--real famous people, even--that ruin any suspension of disbelief. In his attempt to ground his story in history, he has made it all the more ridiculous. Perhaps the closest analogy would be the occasional Scooby-Doo episode where a marginalized sub-celebrity like Don Knotts or Mama Cass opt for the assistance of a talking dog who can't help but mispronounce their names every thirty seconds (Relp me, Roscar Rilde!--if you will).
The thespian Henry Irving comes and goes, and with him go discussions of whether he is more Jekyll or Hyde. Oscar Wilde flounces across the scene now and again, serving no purpose but to be Oscar Wilde. Arthur Conan Doyle serves as advisor for amateur sleuth Stoker, and is rarely mentioned without an additional reminder that he created of Sherlock Holmes. The story suffers for this hyper-self-conscious treatment of the characters, resulting in strange locutions like: "Conan Doyle stared at his friend in shocked silence, and Stoker said the name once again.--Jack the Ripper." Randisi even goes so far as to have Sir Arthur Conan Doyle say, "It's quite elementary, my dear Stoker." The end result, of course, is that the characters are never fully inserted into the story, remaining, instead, ghosts of their historical selves haunting the pages.
This sends aftershocks through the novel, undermining everything else. The hyper-conscious use of the characters eventually tears the plot asunder. Jack the Ripper, himself, eventually becomes a Macguffin. Since history declares that Bram Stoker had no role in the Ripper investigation, there is a scene where one of the investigators delivers a variation of the Give me your gun and your badge. This department can't allow such a loose cannon, so readers have to suffer through the "consider yourself off the case speech that we all know so well from just about any police movie. And from that moment on, the story trails off.
Glimpses into Jack's mind are allowed, reading somewhere between a teenage goth's diary and Cliff's Notes of the actual autopsy reports of his victims. Meanwhile, Stoker spends his time closely following the clearly insane Henry Irving, who delves deep into his theatrical bag of tricks in order to portray the reddest of herrings. And the great promise of the idea at the center of the novel limps to a head when The Ripper, as Freddy Krueger by gaslight, sneaks up on Stoker, requests some light proofreading assistance, and suggests that the inquisitive theatre manager research a certain Eastern European prince.
Somehow, the novel continues for a great many pages from that point, but for all intents and purposes, that is where it ends. The higher truth of history demands that Jack kill some more and Stoker, following his own destiny, has a book to write, so they go their separate ways, petering away, until the author suddenly springs a faux-Joycean short-story epiphany--long after the length of the novel becomes conspicuous. The interest of that central question remains, however. Perhaps some inquisitive soul, turning the last page of prose with a sigh and finding Randisi's bibliography, will find this a topic worth reexamining in another context.