“I'm not even sure where to start with this review. I should first say that I have always been very intrigued by the Jack the Ripper case - this is the 11th nonfiction book I've read on it - don't freak out, I'm not a sicko or a serial killer, this is just the best who-done-it in history and I love reading about Victorian times.
That's enough of a preface for you to know that in the years I've been reading about Jack the Ripper, I've learned a thing or two about the case. Patricia Cornwell, on the other hand, was basically introduced to the case in 2001 and it seems that she felt that everyone who has been studying the case for the past 113 years are idiots and her superior brain has solved the case indisputedly in a little less than 15 months. Her choice for the killer - someone who has been mentioned in the past and never really taken all that seriously as a suspect - the painter Walter Sickert.
How did Cornwell solve this case so quickly? Let's take a look. First, she takes every letter written that was signed Jack the Ripper (in which there are hundreds) and decides that they are all written by Sickert. It should now be noted that everyone - police officers, hand-writing experts, psychologists, historians, etc. etc. has basically come to the same conclusion over the years that probably at least 85 percent of the letters were hoaxes. During this time in history, this kind of thing happened a lot, remember - there was no radio or tv back then - people got their fun from the newspapers, so people had fun with them. To better illustrate Cornwell's apparent ignorance of this fact (and of history) she actually uses the newspaper The Sun as a source - The Sun is known as the first tabloid newpaper published and made its money by...wait for it, creating hoaxes. Not to mention that most hand-writing experts say that no matter how talented you are, you can't fully disguise traces of your handwriting style, there is usually something that can compared to other writing samples. Not according to Cornwell - Sickert was able to disguise everything about his writing, so he was able to write every letter and have them look nothing alike. And the best part - somehow he was able to write two or even three different letters and send them from three distinct locations at the same time (Please note that the police did not save the envelopes of these letters, therefore throwing away the postmark - the only dates and places available are the ones that the person writing the letters wrote in them) Cornwell was able to use her superior logic to figure out that - WOW - the letter writer must have LIED about when and where he wrote the letters - Amazing detective work.
Next, Cornwell goes on and on about how the letters were all written on the same type of paper, when she actually looks at records she discovers that the paper company that made the paper was a big distributer of paper during the 1880s - she apparently does not come to the same conclusion as any person with half a brain that maybe the reason the same type of paper was used was because that's the type of paper that was available. And the "blood" that was found on the letters was not actually blood!!?? Wow! that fact was already known before you ran your tests, genius.
What I loved the most was Cornwell's strengthening of her case against Sickert by ridiculing other suspects. She laughs at everyone's foolishness that they think it was the Duke of Clarence and/or his doctor Willium Gull and she has no problem making fun of this theory. The only problem is, this theory has been pretty much ridiculed by everyone as nonsense for the past 30 years. The last time someone tried to support this theory was in the late 70s. Then she makes fun of Montigue John Druitt - I don't think there is anyone still alive that backs that theory anymore.
Cornwell's proof is even more laughable. She points out some of his paintings and clues left by Sickert in his paintings and drawings to laugh at the bumbling idiots that are trying to find Jack the Ripper. Stupidly, Cornwell includes these pictures in the book so you can see just how insane her theories are and how much she is fishing for one little thing that would connect Sickert to the crimes.
More proof: In his letters, Jack the Ripper writes Ha Ha whenever he wants to laugh at the police. According to Cornwell, no one ever in the history of the world wrote these to words to signify laughing except Sickert because his good buddy James McNeil Whistler reportedly used to laugh like that. The letters also have a lot of grammatical mistakes, which Cornwell points out every single time - once again showing her ignorance of history and how the spelling of these words were not really standardized until later.
Basically, Cornwell ignores the crimes that were actually committed and focuses almost all of her energy on the letters that, as I mentioned before, no one really believes Jack the Ripper wrote. The only thing that she can really put forth is that Walter Sickert may have possibly written a few letters, which I think could possibly be true. It was obvious to me that Cornwell really didn't know very much about the case. She showed her arrogance and disdain for all of the idiots who worked the case because they didn't use all of the techniques that she used to "solve" the case (those techniques were not available in 1888) and she showed how she thinks anyone who has studied the case before must be complete idiots for not finding Sickert sooner. It is obvious that Cornwell wrote this book thinking she could hoodwink all of her fiction readers into believing some of her "evidence" - but anyone with even the slightest knowledge of the case could see huge gaps in everything she said. With that in mind, I would NOT recommend this book, and as far as Ripper literature goes, it belongs with the book that actually tried to prove that Lewis Carroll (yes, writer of Alice in Wonderland) was in fact, the Ripper. 2 stars”
Brad B wrote this review Saturday, November 14 2009.
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