A New Take on an Old Killer

Stalking Jack the Ripper by Kerri Maniscalco

I enjoy Jack the Ripper. I watch all the tv shows, I can't tell you how many times I've seen From Hell, and I even read that horrible book by Patricia Cornwell where she "solved the mystery." All that said, I REALLY enjoyed this book!

One nice thing, if you can say there is any nice thing about the Ripper murders, is that we don't know who actually committed the murders (except, apparently, Patricia Cornwell), so any work of fiction written can make it anybody. And really, it could have been just about anybody.

Once again, it wasn't who I thought it was, but I was convinced it was one particular character up until the last forty pages or so. I can't believe I am so bad at solving these mysteries!!

Ok, so the story...

Audrey Rose is seventeen in Victorian England (obviously, since that is when the Ripper murders took place). She lives in relative splendor in London with her father and her brother, Nathaniel. Her father has a bit of an opium addiction that stems from the death of his wife some five years prior, and this is important because he is sent away to the country for a few weeks to detox. Audrey Rose spends a great deal of time in her uncle's laboratory, performing autopsies if you will, and learning about forensics. She also dresses as a boy to attend her uncle's classes.

It is in one of these classes that Audrey Rose meets Thomas Cresswell, another student of her uncle's. The three of them are charged by Scotland Yard to help solve the Ripper murders, until Uncle Jonathan is arrested and put in Bedlam, that is. Audrey Rose and Thomas know that Uncle Jonathan is not responsible, and do everything they can to clear his name. What finally does so is another murder is committed while Uncle Jonathan is in the asylum. He is released, and they all keep searching for the killer.

This was so well done, you could almost feel yourself walking along the foggy, cobblestone streets of the East End of London. You could envision the ghastly images of the victims, and the injuries they sustained because of the author's descriptions. As I said, I was wrong on the culprit, but it was a great read on the whole.