Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper -- Case Closed

Rating:
Summary: A Long, Grim Trip
Review: As many other readers have pointed out, this book's subtitle ("Case Closed") is an obvious overstatement. Cornwell's evidence is circumstantial and speculative, certainly not enough to convict Walter Sickert either in 1889 or today. What I found more objectionable about "Portrait of a Killer" were the endless, repetitive descriptions of life in Victorian slums - befouled water, tainted food, horrible diseases, unsanitary hospitals, filth everywhere, nauseating odors, rampant alcoholism, etc., etc. Yes, we get it - life was bad! How much of this does the average person really want to read? Just when we think we're finally done with these long descriptive passages, more of them turn up. For me, at least, it was a case of authorial overkill. These bleak and morbid details, combined with Cornwell's claim that writing this book threatened to "ruin" her life, actually made me wonder if she is suffering from depression. This is no joke - the book reads as if written by a severely depressed person. Certainly any reader of this book is likely to come away from it feeling depressed - but probably not convinced.

Rating:
Summary: Could have, might have, I can speculate
Review: For a book that is supposed to offer absolute proof, this book is filled with phrases like "Sickert might have." "Sickert could have," and my favorite, "I can speculate." Most people do; however, you should know the difference between speculation and proof.

The artist nominated by Ms. Cornwall as the latest "Jack" came to the attention of Ms. Cornwall by a British police officer. If the artist is known to this policemen, surely he was known to the police over 100 years ago. As she states, quite a lot of "Ripper" evidence, etc, was lost or stolen. How does Ms. Cornwall know this person wasn't a suspect and perhaps cleared?

After killing all these women, Ms. Cornwall credits him with the killing of several children. For a serial killer, this is almost unheard of. Why? Too many things unexplained.

A weak motive, along with the possibility that the artist may have written letters (which police later believed were phony). This is her great "evidence."

No witnesses, no admission of guilt....no one will ever know who Jack the Ripper is. For someone to say unequivocally they have uncovered Jack the Ripper wich such flimsy "evidence" -- all I can say, she should never be on a jury.

Rating:
Summary: Where's "Saucy Jack" when I need him?
Review: What an almost complete waste of time! I say "almost" because I try to always find something good in everything. There was some interesting research about the history of policing in England and tidbits about paper manufacturing and handwriting analysis. However, if Ms. Cornwell had chosen to write this book as historic fiction and used one of her own characters as the investigator on the case then she might have been able to create something entertaining and worthwile. She then could have taken poetic license and beefed up some of her so-called evidence. Perhaps she could have had her protagonist find evidence in Inspector Abberline's "diary" or the Ripper's scrapbook. Instead she has served up nothing but sheer speculation and far-fetched hypotheses. All of her theories hinge on so many other possibilities that the case against her suspect tumbles like a house of cards. I have read many Jack the Ripper theories and I must say that most of them, although easily disproven, have been more interesting and plausible than Cornwell's unsubstantiated accusations. She backs up none of her "facts" with anything concrete, but has the hubris to claim that she has come up with the definitive solution. I'm especially irked by comments in which she says things like, "I wouldn't dare claim that these letters were written by Sickert or even Jack the Ripper," and then in subsequent paragraphs she states, "Clearly, the Ripper had a mixture of A Pirie batches (of paper) when he wrote these November 22nd letters..." That sounds to me like she's certain that those particular letters were indeed written by the Ripper. Throughout the entire loathesome book she does things like this and I found it more and more frustrating with every page that I turned. And yet I'd kept on reading because I kept hoping that she'd actually present some facts that would knock my socks off, but it didn't happen. Stick with fiction, Pat. Your story has more holes in it than a middle-aged, alcoholic unfortunate's worn out cotton knickers.

Rating:
Summary: Jack the Ripper: Portrait of a Pre-conceived Suspect
Review: Anytime an author claims to have singlehandedly solved the Jack the Ripper murders, watch out. Patricia Cornwell's latest book "Portrait of a Killer. Jack the Ripper Case Closed" is no exception. This book is getting waaay to much media hype. Actually, its not a bad book, as far as it goes, and Cornwell has contributed some valuable and interesting research to add to our knowledge of these crimes. But the book has NOT in any way proved that Victorian artist and student of James Whistler, Walter Sickert was the Ripper. No published Ripperologists I am aware of still consider Sickert a viable suspect. Other reviewers have listed the flaws of the book, so I will forbear doing so here-and a succint review of the book can be read on the Casebook: Jack the Ripper website. My main gripe with this book is that Cornwell comes across as a maverick, disregarding the work, much of it groundbreaking, of published, established, expert Ripperologists such as Rumbelow, Stewart, Evans, Skinner and Begg. To hear all the media hype, Cornwell is the only serious Ripper student to publish a book in the last twenty years! She studied the case for about two years and came up with the man she feels is the murderer, whereas these guys have been studying the Ripper crimes for over twenty years and still haven't claimed to have solved it yet. It's as if in her mind the contributions of the other Ripperologists were negligible. Or, she acknowledges their conclusions, then ignores them. Cornwell seems to pay little, if any attention to their work in her book (only two of the standard Ripper works are cited in the extensive bibliography, and in her recent TLC cable special on the book only one noted Ripperologist was interviewed-Donald Rumbelow-and his comments were edited down to two or three minutes). The only caveat to the work of serious Ripperologists is one line at the end of the book where Cornwell acknowledges the work of others who have studied the Ripper case and says that she and they have solved the case together. This would be akin to Donald Rumbelow or Keith Skinner suddenly writing a crime fiction novel and comparing their work to Agatha Christy or Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta novels. Mrs. Cornwell picked a suspect and then, perhaps even unconsciously, made the evidence fit. Not a bad read, but if you're new to the Ripper case you would do better to star off with Donald Rumbelow or one of the other acknowledged Ripper experts. Check out the Casebook: Jack the Ripper website.

Rating:
Summary: willfully naive
Review: Michael Crichton said he became a novelist after being a doctor because he would imagine--incorrectly--all these extreme things that were wrong with his patients. He realized his imagination would be better put to use writing novels, since he had too much a flight of fancy for the objective life of a doctor. Cornwell should follow Crichton's lead, as she has too much imagination for her own good, and should stay in the realm of fantasy and stay away from fact, since she gets the facts very wrong in CASE CLOSED.

Rating:
Summary: weak research
Review: The research and conclusions in this book are so think you could floss your teeth with it.

Cornwell makes a semi-lucid case for Walter Sickert having scribed some of the letters signed by "Jack the Ripper", but people who had nothing to do with the murders wrote letters supposedly from the killer (a fact Cornwell states). Nowhere does Cornwell make the necessary connection of: because Sickert wrote this specific letter, he must have been the killer because it contains information only the killer would have known.

The information on the Ripper murders were, to say the least, widely reported in the popular press -- and Sickert, along with countless others, could have written fake letters "from" the Ripper based on the information in the newspapers.

Much of her research is sketchy, at best (I wouldn't trust myself to know information about private medical procedures done on any of my uncles while they were young boys -- but Cornwell laughably takes the word of Sickert's nephew as absolute -- and the same nephew later retracted what he had said about Sickert's "penile" fistula, so Cornwell's entire "motive" is toppled.)

Fortunately for Cornwell, nobody can 100% state that Sickert was not the Ripper, but she definitely does not even remotely prove her case.

Rating:
Summary: GET REAL.
Review: Exactly who does Patricia Cornwell think she is to think that she can resolve this case where all these other people involved haven't?

Cornwell has already placed herself on shaky gound with at least some of her fans with "The Last Precinct" and "Isle of Dogs". Has she taken leave of her senses in publishing these two titles? And who does she think she is trying to kid with her so called sense of humor?

On her former web site she made a big deal about all the research she was doing in Colonial Williamsburg and how she was planning to incorporate it into her next Scarpetta novel. It is time for her to produce is it not? Instead we get her take on Jack the Ripper.

Listen to those reviewers who tell you not to waiste your money on Cornwell's Jack the Ripper book. They make good sense. That seems to be a rather large sum to spend just to get a point across. Cornwell is perfectly welcome to publically express her opinions just like the next guy. But that doesn't mean the rest of us are obligated to agree with her.

Rating:
Summary: Case Closed? Yes, if you have expenses to recoup
Review: If you want to get a flavor of what this book and its author are all about without having to purchase a copy, I encourage you to check your local television listings for the one-hour program (carried in our area by The Learning Channel) that chronicles the investigation by Ms Cornwell that is the basis of the book. (Unfortunately, I saw the program after buying the book.) I found the program, which appears to have been scripted by Ms Cornwell, to be an exercise in pretentiousness and self-promotion, revealing in the author an ego the size of Texas. Some of the program was simplistic: a forensic pathologist proclaiming that the wounds to a Ripper victim were more than what was necessary to kill and thus were meant to degrade the victim; a profiler ticking off obvious possible characteristics of such a killer. Some was pretentious: the author stating she felt an obligation to find justice for the Ripper's victims; the author driving up to her private jet in a high-dollar sports car. And some was risible: in one scene, Ms Cornwell's hired experts walk toward the camera shoulder-to-shoulder like gunslingers come to clean up a corrupt town - all that was missing was Elmer Bernstein's score to The Magnificent Seven. I laughed out loud. Much of this could have been forgiven had Ms Cornwell delivered on her claim to have solved the Ripper case, but she has not. What the author has done is to make a circumstantial case for Walter Sickert being the Ripper. The evidence, though circumstantial, moves the author to claim she is "100% certain" that Sickert is the Ripper. While Ms Cornwell's many fans may line up behind this conclusion, objective readers, and those who do not have six million in expenses to recoup, are more likely to conclude simply that Sickert merits inclusion in the cast of suspects.

Rating:
Summary: Case Not So Muc h Closed
Review: While this book had quite a lot of interesting facts and ideas it did not, for me at least, present an iron clad case against Walter Sickert. He probably was more than a little weird, and as Ms. Cornwell suggests, his paintings may show a perverted obsession with women. His art was quite dark in nature, but I did not always agree with Ms. Cornwell that it presented murder scenes. It's too bad he was an impressionist, maybe we could see more clearly what his artwork did represent.

I thought that Ms. Cornwell's writing was very sporadic, she jumped around quite a lot. If she really wanted to convince the world that Walter Sickert was Jack the Ripper, then her book did her theory a great disservice. Perhaps if she had presented the facts that she says she has in a more direct way, it would be more convincing. I came away feeling that she should review her facts and do a rewrite.

In spite of all this I did find the book interesting and enjoyed reading it. It gave me more information on the Ripper murders that I previously had known.

Rating:
Summary: An Interesting Read, but not a Definitive ID
Review: Walter Sickert was an interesting painter and case study, but despite the estimated $6 million author Patricia Cornwell reportedly spent investigating the Jack the Ripper mystery, no smoking gun is revealed in these pages. Cornwell, an author with previous crime lab experience who has gained fame and fortune with best selling novels about the exploits of forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta, provides potential DNA evidence to be used against Sickert to link him to the grisly Jack the Ripper murders, but as critics have noted, it is far from conclusive. Two important factors need to be remembered, 1) scores of letters purporting to have come from Jack the Ripper were received and reviewed by police, with most dismissed as coming from cranks; 2) Sickert was cremated, rendering the prospect of any conclusive DNA finding linking him to the killings virtually inconceivable.

The book has merit, however, on several fronts, just as long as one is circumspect about drawing too much on sometimes fragmentary conclusions concerning Sickert. Victorian England is revealed in fascinating detail, along with the shadowy world of London's East End, Whitechapel, where the Jack the Ripper murders occurred. Sickert is a fascinating figure, with his bizarre artistic genius and ability to hobnob with leading figures of late nineteenth century London. He was the apprentice of the legendary Boston expatriate who took London society by storm and remained to prosper, artist, journalist and bon vivant James McNeill Whistler.

While Sickert's artistic tastes revealed ghoulishness, the desire to paint luckless prostitutes with their hapless customers, it is understandable that he might draw attention as a potential Ripper possibility. He also was known to take walks in the dangerous Whitechapel area in late evenings. These are attention drawing elements, and perhaps render one a suspect, but it takes much more to pin the crimes on Sickert and establish that he indeed was the Ripper.

Due to the fact that so much time has elapsed since the murders were committed over a century ago, it is understandable that interest abounds with a number of prospects being considered. It is also understandable, and indeed likely, that after all the time that has elapsed that speculation will continue to abound without the Jack the Ripper mystery ever being solved.