Rating: 
Summary: The Principle Figure In A Pageant Of Massacre?
Review: Patricia Cornwell's investigation into whether British painter Walker Sickert was in fact also infamous murderer Jack the Ripper has been fascinating to follow in the media over the last year. As the essence of any good investigation is clear, accurate perception, precision, and a rigorous search for the facts and truth by objective methods, it is by these standards that Cornwell's book must be considered. The author has accumulated an enormous amount of circumstantial evidence against Sickert, but Portrait of a Killer is amateurishly written, sloppily executed, and poorly edited. For a famous crime writer, Cornwell has produced a weak book unlikely to stand up to scrutiny or survive the brunt of attacks by Ripperologists the world over, written as it has been for the uncritical light reader. Every facet of Portrait of a Killer seems rushed, as though Cornwell wrote with little consideration for structure and then submitted the manuscript without rereading, rewriting, or thinking it through as a whole. The awkward title alone suggests Cornwell's hesitations: 'Portrait of a Killer / Jack The Ripper / Case Closed.' Why not 'Walter Sickert: Portrait of a Killer,' or 'Walter Sickert: Jack The Ripper?' Why the reservation about damning her subject in the title, as she does so heartily in the text? For Cornwell damns Sickert before she's made her case, and from the first page. She immediately refers to Sickert as a killer as if this were an objective fact, and as a 'psychopath,' a phrase she bandies about loosely and without proper definition throughout the book. By contemptuously referring to his rented East End studios as 'ratholes' upon their first mention, Cornwell makes her biases entirely clear. As a result, Sickert's habit of long walks become 'obsessive walks,' and his love of walking at night becomes evidence of his psychopathology, when night walking was also the habit of Edgar Allen Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Paul Bowles, Walt Whitman, Thoreau, and Charles Baudelaire. Sickert's penchant for watching and studying people is also interpreted as a sign of his predatory madness, rather than as an attribute common to most visual artists, actors, and writers - to say nothing of detectives and crime writers. Describing a poem sent to the police and signed 'Jack the Ripper' which she believes was written by Sickert, Cornwell describes the poem's rhymes as "not those of an illiterate or deranged person." Since she believes Sickert was a "psychopath," by what criteria was he a "psychopath" but not a "deranged person?" Cornwell says of the broken, middle-aged Sickert, "He subsisted in filth and chaos. He was a slob and he stank," but on the next page states, "he traversed the surface of life as a respectable, intellectual gentleman." The same easy logic the author uses to turn the lights on Sickert could be used on anyone, at anytime. Cornwell has been obsessed with and made a career of criminal behavior, death, and murder herself; by her own what - makes - madness equation, shouldn't she explain her own morbid preoccupations to the reader? In light of the many sound accomplishments found here, it's unfortunate how many errors in judgement Cornwell has made, especially if "staking her career" on this volume as she says she is. Sickert is portrayed on any number of pages as manipulative, bizarre, cunning, misogynistic, treacherous, desperate for attention, and dangerously arrogant - Cornwell states these are facts about his character - but provides almost no sources for her information, when this should have been scrupulously documented. The worst others have to say about Sickert comes to almost nothing. Under oath, former teacher Whistler says, "Walter has a treacherous side to his character," his first wife's sister, who clearly disliked Sickert, perhaps with good reason, says "they cannot know what he really is as you do," and Clive Bell refers to him a man of "no standards." In exaggerated fashion, Cornwell calls Sickert a "master of disguise" - a master, not just an afficionado - but again provides no sources. Viewing early drawings by Sickert-or, she admits, perhaps drawn by his father-Cornwell believes she already sees clear evidence of a woman-hater and a violent, disturbed mind. But when the reader refers to these drawings, the figures are hardly more than stick figures; one male figure Cornwell ominously perceives as "about to spring" at a defenseless woman looks more like a hemorrhoid sufferer hesitantly lowering himself onto a cold toilet. Yet two Ripper letters containing drawings obviously done by a talented hand are called "crude." An in-profile caricature of a woman is said to have "an ugly mole" on the nose, but the "mole" is clearly just an oversized, if still unsightly, nostril. Readers will get the sense that one thing Cornwell isn't is a visual artist, a race she seems to have little understanding of or sympathy with. Sickert's relationships with his wives is barely touched upon until the end, and what first wife Ellen thought about her husband, whom she loved until her death, is never made clear. Since Cornwell believes Sickert was impotent all his life and perhaps left without a penis after three traumatic childhood surgeries, the reader should know a great deal about his marital life, and what his wives felt about marrying a man only to discover a eunuch in their honeymoon beds. Cornwell, in sadly PC fashion, quotes her mentor Dr. Marcella Fierro as saying "a woman has the right to walk around naked and not be raped or murdered." In the theoretical and idealized Garden of Eden of liberalism, that certainly may be the case. Reality, again, is something else. Cornwell embarrasses herself by stooping so low to make an unnecessary case for the Ripper's desperate, tragic victims. The author should have spent several more years on this book and then written a scholarly, definitive account of her presently unfinished investigation. Why the rush to publication? Cornwell's errors and misjudgements throughout will only raise powerful doubts about her methods and conclusions, and prejudice the reader against the more solid fruits of her labor.
Rating: 
Summary: fantastic non-fiction start to finish
Review: Being a huge Dr. Kay Scarpetta fan, I was at first hesitant to purchase Patricia Cornwell's first venture into non-fiction. Boy am I glad I changed my mind. This is the best book I have read in years. Being a fiction mystery and thriller fan at heart, this book has changed my hesitancy to read non-fiction forever. This book is exciting and hard to put down from page 1 to the very last sentence. Not only does Patricia Cornwell present you with overwhelming circumstantial evidence as to who Jack the Ripper was, but she gives you extensive background about London in the 1880's, the Victorian mindset at that time, the abilities and inabilities of the local police and Scotlad Yard to effectively investigate these crimes. The writing is so descriptive and detailed that you progressive from one mental picture to another easily. The circumstantial evidence that that has been discovered by Patricia Cornwell and her team of experts will have you convinced of who the real Jack the Ripper was within the first fifty pages, but the volume of evidence just grows and grows to the very end. This is a must read for all Patricia Cornwell fans and will become her most famous and most enjoyed book to date, even for fiction buffs like myself.
Rating:
Summary: jack the ripper - still an industry
Review: A book claiming to reveal the true identity of the legendary Jack the Ripper , by one of the leading crime writers in the world , is always going to hit the bestsellerlists and Patricia's editors must have realized this when they gave this book the go-ahead. Who cares if the thing is badly written ( its amazing Patricia Cornwell is a bestselling author at all) and the case poorly researched (convicting someone by looking at his paintings ? That's what they do in Iran , no ?) Just publish it in time for christmas, sit back and relax.
Really , any hope of suspension is immediately destroyed by all these (fatal) flaws. Check Amazon.com for better Ripper books.
Rating:
Summary: Not Proven!
Review: Caveat emptor! This book does not, once and for all, solve the mystery of the Ripper's identity. In fact, the arguments made in support of the guilt of Cornwell's suspect do not even make out a convincing case that she is on the right track. There can be few more damning allegations than to accuse someone of being one of the most notorious, sadistic and misogynistic serial killers of all time. When such claims were made during the accused's lifetime, he (or she) was at least able in theory to offer a defense. But long after the Ripper's death, dozens and dozens of suspects have been offered up by authors with varying degrees of objectivity, integrity, honesty and fairness. In all those cases, the counter-arguments had to be made by others who had studied the reports of the crimes, and who often succeeded in discrediting the new theory. But permanent damage to the reputations of many perfectly peaceful and respectable members of England's citizenry was done, as they would forever be linked in the minds of some with ghastly brutal mutilation murders because of irresponsible speculations. Thus, anyone approaching the case after almost a century of mostly armchair sleuthing and conjecture, should be on notice that pointing a finger unswervingly at a contemporary of the crimes is not an endeavor to be undertaken lightly. Rather, humility, intellectual honesty, and an openness to evidence that may contradict a working hypothesis are vital. None of those qualities are in abundance in this book. Despite a long-standing fascination with serial killers, Cornwell apparently was completely unfamiliar with the Ripper case until a chance encounter with a senior Scotland Yard official who directed her attention to Walter Sickert, a well-known painter, as someone worth further study (even though he had previously been named as one of a trio of Rippers as part of the Royal/Masonic conspiracy theory most recently featured in the movie From Hell, and, over a decade ago, by Jean Overton Fuller, as the lone butcher in her book, Sickert and the Ripper Crimes.) That suggestion prompted Cornwell to spend a year and a half, and, according to press reports, $6 million of her own money, to study Sickert and establish his guilt. Her proof consists, in essence, of: 1) some inconclusive DNA evidence that cannot be linked to Sickert or the actual killer; 2) evidence that Sickert used stationery that was also used by some of the cranks who wrote to the police claiming to be the killer; 3) her interpretation of Sickert's paintings as proof that he was obsessed with the Ripper. She only weakens these already tenuous contentions by spending time arguing points such as that Sickert was probably the killler because his friend Whistler used the phrase "ha ha," and so did some of the letters ostensibly from the Ripper. (She also finds significance in the fact that Sickert liked the word "fools", a term that also appears in some of the Ripper letters.) None of this is actual proof of anything that implicates Sickert. Whether he was a moral paragon or not, he does not deserve to have his memory tarnished by unsupported charges. Despite its author's celebrity, this is not a serious work of true crime, and adds nothing of merit to the ongoing debate about the Whitechapel murderer.
Rating:
Summary: Perfection from Cornwell, as expected!
Review: This book is throughly researched and,as usual, written with both clinical and informing intentions. At the same time, Cornwell enables the reader to become absorbed in the history of the time of Jack the Ripper that only the section of photographs in the middle of the book reminds of the truth it represents! It is a wonderful and enlightning book to the wonders of modern investigative technics and is a fascinating read for passionate fans or "newbies" to her work!... Highly recommended!...
Rating: 
Summary: A Good Read
Review: To start with, this book is very good. It tells you who, when, and where the whole time. Cornwell always let you know what she was thinking and wrote her side of the story and never left anything out. If she was unsure, she would say she was. She never led me down the wrong track. I'm a big fan of her and so is my mother.
This book had it all. The only reason I didn't give it a perfect 5 stars is because she sometimes started talking in so much detail about something that I felt like I was in school again. It was a good read. I would suggest this book to adults, not children.
Rating: 
Summary: Case Closed?
Review: Cornwell has uncovered some suggestive but far from definitive evidence, which leads her to conclude that the artist Walter Sickert was responsible for the Jack the Ripper murders, as well as others never ascribed to the Ripper. Her approach is inflated and highly speculative--lots of "would have-could have-must have"--and rests to a surprising degree on pseudo-Freudian "profiling" of Sickert. Illustrations that compare known drawings of Sickert's to Ripper letters are interesting, but also be prepared for some gory and (I think) gratuitous crime scene and autopsy photographs. The book was a disappointment, and I returned it to Amazon less than 24 hours after its arrival.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent research and storytelling
Review: This book is a wealth of information. Instead of relying on theories, Ms. Cornwell investigates these crimes as if they just happened. The book was compulsively readable. I bought it the first day it came out and barely put it down for two days except to go to work!
I have to say that I am convinced that Walter Sickert was Jack the Ripper. Cornwell's handwriting and language experts looked at his letters and way of writing and compared them to Ripper letters. I don't want to give too much away but your jaw will drop as this mystery is exposed.
Rating:
Summary: save your money
Review: the early consensus is that this book is a lot of gibberish from a supremely arrogant, self-important charlatan; save your money and visit casebook.org for all the informations you would ever want on this subject. if you must waste your money on this, wait a few weeks until it's remaindered.
Rating:
Summary: Good
Review: While I do have a problem with assessments of who killed whom after all the subjects are dead (how would YOU like it if after you were dead, someone theorized--incorrectly--that YOU were the murderer in an unsolved crime!), I did find this a gripping read. It helps to be interested in Jack the Ripper to begin with, as I am, but even if not, I think you'll find this as good as Cornwell's novels. Probably the most gripping read I've had since Craig Furrnas' THE SHAPE: A NOVEL OF INTERNATIONAL SUSPENSE. And, frankly, I'm VERY impressed that Cornwell spent--according to the "New York Times"--$6 million investigating the case!! Has a writer ever spent more than that researching a book?! If so, I'd like to know its title!
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