Genre: Mystery, Romance
LGBTQ+ Category: Gay
Reviewer: Ulysses
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About The Book
What if you could prove that the greatest Gothic horror novel of all time was a true story?
Dexter and Morgan meet on their eighteenth birthday. The attraction is instant but confusing. As they deal with coming out, they are bound together by more than first love.
Both keep diaries, and each has the same goal – to prove that Stoker didn’t write ‘Dracula’. They are convinced that Harker, Van Helsing and the others existed and wrote the novel’s journals themselves. If Dex and Morgan can prove it, they will blow the lid off the vampire myth: Dracula existed.
As the two teenagers fall in love, so they fall into an adventure as thrilling as it is dangerous. They are being watched, and someone is willing to kill to stop them from making ‘The Stoker Connection.’
The Stoker Connection is an MM Romance treasure hunt thriller. It draws on the original text of ‘Dracula’, but it is not a story about vampires. It is a story of first love and the power of friendship. Sometimes funny, it is an intriguing and honest account compiled from Dex and Morgan’s original diaries.
The Review
I’m a big fan of Jackson Marsh, but mostly through his remarkable Clearwater books (all 31 of them, of which I’ve read 25 so far). I picked up this earlier work of his (2018) for two reasons: the thought of two young gay men obsessed with the greatest work of the Scottish author Bram Stoker was tantalizing; and also the fact that I, myself, have been obsessed with “Dracula” since I was twelve years old (back in 1967). Bram Stoker actually becomes a significant character in the Clearwater mysteries, and that intrigued me as well.
Morgan Davis and Dexter Mitchell meet by chance at an old theater in Folkestone, UK just after their eighteenth birthday (2017, the year I retired). Not only are they both fascinated by the books of Bram Stoker, but they were both born on the same day—which happens to be Bram Stoker’s birthday. They share a theory that Stoker’s most famous book, “Dracula,” published in 1897, is based on true stories, although neither young man believes that vampires are real. The narrative mimicks the structure of “Dracula” in that it is epistolary, made up of letters and journal entries. The two boys are really committed to what they do.
Aside from the fact that Morgan and Dexter fall in love, this book is really about their adventures together trying to prove their theory about the truth behind Bram Stoker’s masterwork. In several ways it foreshadows a lot of what Jackson Marsh will do in his Clearwater books (which began in 2019). It is an adventure that shares features with later Marsh novels: high-powered action against a ticking clock, an unexpected degree of danger, and a love of complicated puzzles. Of course the two young men are adorable and we root for them from the moment they meet.
A huge difference is, of course, the historical setting. Morgan and Dexter live in the 21st century, and they both have families who love and understand them—something often absent in the various Clearwater series, set in the 1880s and 90s. On a personal level, they face challenges typical of gay boys coming out in the UK in the present day. Marsh handles this with the deft hand of someone who remembers what it was like. Although I came out over fifty years ago, and in the USA, those are memories that don’t fade away.
Another hallmark of Marsh’s books is the surprise ending. What startled me most in this book is that the real twist at the end comes in a throwaway line that the reader might almost miss. I loved that. Pay attention.
5 stars.
The Reviewer
Ulysses Grant Dietz grew up in Syracuse, New York, where his Leave It to Beaver life was enlivened by his fascination with vampires, from Bela Lugosi to Barnabas Collins. He studied French at Yale, and was trained to be a museum curator at the University of Delaware. A curator since 1980, Ulysses has never stopped writing fiction for the sheer pleasure of it. He created the character of Desmond Beckwith in 1988 as his personal response to Anne Rice’s landmark novels. Alyson Books released his first novel, Desmond, in 1998. Vampire in Suburbia, the sequel to Desmond, is his second novel.
Ulysses lives in suburban New Jersey with his husband of over 41 years and their two almost-grown children.
By the way, the name Ulysses was not his parents’ idea of a joke: he is a great-great grandson of Ulysses S. Grant, and his mother was the President’s last living great-grandchild. Every year on April 27 he gives a speech at Grant’s Tomb in New York City.
