1. Discuss the roles history and fiction play in THE DRACULA DOSSIER. As a reader, do you find that they are more complementary or contradictory? Did the Author's Note help you to reconcile the two, or was this not a concern as you read the novel? Will THE DRACULA DOSSIER lead you to search out more non-fiction on related topics?
   
   
2. How is Bram Stoker revealed to the reader as the novel's protagonist? Does the "fact" that you are reading his journal make him seem more real to you? How does Stoker evolve as the "reluctant hero" of the story he is confiding to his journal?
   
   
3. Stoker's life is very different when he returns to England from America at the beginning of the novel. How so? What role might the sea voyage separating the two settings play?
   
   
4. Discuss Stoker's relationship to the paternal figures in his life: his own father, Henry Irving, and Walt Whitman.
   
   
5. Discuss the relationship—both familial and literary—between Lady Jane Wilde and her son, Oscar.
   
   
6. What role does Florence Stoker play in the novel? Florence Irving? Constance Wilde? How do these women differ from the depiction of Ellen Terry and, above all, Lady Jane Wilde?
   
   
7. What aspects of Dr. Tumblety's character remain with you after having read the novel? And what did you learn about the Ripper murders that most affected you?
   
   
8. Comment on the relationship between Hall Caine and Francis Tumblety. How is it different earlier in their lives? Are you sympathetic to Caine's predicament as the novel evolves? If not, what would you have done differently? What might Caine himself do today, if the novel were somehow set in the present?
   
   
9. If you are familiar with Stoker's DRACULA, discuss the similarities in structure between that novel and THE DRACULA DOSSIER. In particular, how are the endings of the two novels similar in structure?
   
   
10. Also for those familiar with DRACULA: What characters in THE DRACULA DOSSIER "reappear" in Stoker's novel? For instance, Van Helsing may be seen to be comprised of equal parts Lady Wilde and Whitman. What about Mina Harker? And of course, the Count himself?
    
    
11. Discuss the appropriateness of Edinburgh—particularly, the city beneath the city, and Edinburgh Castle—as the setting for the end of THE DRACULA DOSSIER.