One of the problems with reading classic books for the first time is that, through film adaptations, parodies, tributes, or pure cultural saturation, you usually know 50-90% of the plot already. In essence, the book is spoiled for you before you even start. Stripped of suspense, shock value, and the simple propulsion of not knowing what happens next, the books are forced to stand on the quality of the story and the craft with which they were written.

As I've spent most of 2011 catching up on Victorian Era masterpieces that somehow eluded me in high school and college, I've come face to face with this phenomenon repeatedly over the last few months. It's interesting how some books - Dracula and Around the World in Eighty Days, just to name two - were engaging and moving in spite of all the movie versions I'd seen, while others, such as The Picture of Dorian Gray, dragged and had me wanting to skim pages.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde fell into that latter group, for me at least. Armed as I was from the beginning with the knowledge that Jekyll and Hyde were the same man, it was endlessly frustrating to me that it took characters in the book so long to realize it. Of course, that's partly a case of the book being a victim of its own success - now that the phrase and idea "Jekyll and Hyde" have been planted in our collective minds for over a century, the book's great reveal is obvious, even tedious, in a way it wouldn't have been had The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde never been published. Paradox.

However, even with the impact of its surprise plot twist eliminated, the book could have been a more interesting read than it was. But all the things that could have made it so - horror, humor, well-developed characters, great dialogue - are largely absent here. The book is a pretty dry, straightforward read, and I give it three stars mostly because it had the good grace to at least be a short one.