Book Review: The Dreadful Doctor Faust by Karen Koehler

The Dreadful Doctor Faust is a quirky story aiming to be both a revenge story and a romance. But the effort to merge these two element results in a hybrid that fails to develop its main characters.

The main character is Louise, who initially washes ashore after her body is dumped from a bridge. The story bounds from past to present to tell how Louise came to be left in this way, but it also covers her acts of revenge, and her recovery with the help of The Doctor.

The story is vividly described, with characters and scenery being given time to develop visually. But while the locations ripple with dark menace, the cast of characters fall flat as cardboard stereotypes.

The Doctor is a Victorian-era mad scientist who now longs for company after a century and a half of being alone. He is depicted as cruel and cold, but then he wanders around curing cholera outbreaks. Louise is the reformed victim acting out her revenge, recalling shade of I Spit on Your Grave or many similar exploitation clones. Both are animated by the Elixir, a formula that may be similar to the Elixir that Ramses uses in The Mummy. Another character is revealed as a killer with a “mother problem,” much like Norman/Norma Bates. I bring up the comparisons because often, instead of thinking of this story, I was thinking of all the places I’d seen the same story elements before.

The romantic angle never works because The Doctor and Louise are so flat throughout the story. The only character to feel more real was a strip club owner, mainly because the narrator made him seem human. Everyone else’s history is just rattled off like a cop reading an autopsy report after the fact. While the revenge angle does reach a satisfying and gory conclusion, the scene of Louise and The Doctor coming to terms with each other doesn’t resonate with any emotion.

Overall I give The Dreadful Doctor Faust 3 stars. It’s not a bad book, but it’s not Karen Koehler’s strongest writing. I would recommend it for fans of revenge stories and 70’s Euroslash films.