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

Rating:
Summary: Ummm....Case Still Open
Review: Are you obsessively interested in the life, work and anatomy of Walter Sickert? If so, this is the book for you. Chock full of psychobabble, purest conjecture and self-congratulation, this analysis of a possible candidate for Jack the Ripper manages to make perhaps the most famous series of brutal unsolved crimes in history positively soporific.

If you're interested in Jack the Ripper, there are lots of very good books actually about the killings, the investigation and the many possible suspects. Go pick one of them instead.

Rating:
Summary: Not quite!
Review: I have been interested in the Jack the Ripper case for some time, so I was anxious to read this book. It just wasn't as good as I had hoped. I had never heard of Sickert before I read this book, so I had no preconceived notions. I have no trouble believing that he wrote many of the Ripper letters and that he was mentally unstable. Patricia Cornwell almost had me believing that he might be Jack the Ripper. I was startled and confused by the abrupt end of the book. I was expecting her to tie up all the evidence in a nice neat package and she just stopped at the funeral of Sickert's second wife. I needed more to convince me. I was disappointed, as the other readers, at the way Cornwell skipped around. At one point I had to turn back several chapters to see if I was confused about a date. I still am not sure!

Rating:
Summary: 3 stars for effort, zero for credibility
Review: I tried to read this book, but found it to be very 1 sided(which comes to be expected with JTR single-suspect type books). I think that she did a very good job with her research, but it just wasn't enough. I believe that maybe the only point Cornwell made was that Walter Sickert was probably the author of many of the Ripper Letters... in fact, the DNA evidence she wrote about proved this, but everyone who knows a little about JTR knows that the killer may not have written any of those letters, and they were all written by different people. It was a good try, and Portrait is a very well authored book on a very popular theory, but its just not good enough to convince most ripperologists. I would recommend at least skimming through this for anyone interested in the Ripper murders, because Cornwell does touch on a few good points, but I would also recommend checking out some other works. I would recommend that maybe you invest in a nice ripper encyclopedia, such as Phillip Sugden's "The Complete History of Jack the Ripper" and/or Paul Begg, Martin Fido, and Keith Skinner's "Jack the Ripper A-Z." I would also recommend the on-line casebook, which includes info on every single JTR suspect, witness, and victim. It also includes articles transcribed from several old newspapers and magazines, oficial documents, and almost everything else. I'm not supposed to put in urls, so I'll just recommend you do a search for "Casebook: Jack the Ripper" on any online search engine. If you are intrested in Sickert as a suspect, you should certainly check out Cornwell's book, but definitely also check out those other materials.

Rating:
Summary: Be prepared for the gruesome
Review: Portrait of a Killer, Jack the Ripper Case Closed. It sounds like a Victorian Thriller, and coming from well known mystery author Patricia Cornwell, one might expect it to be one. What it is, however, is an extremely well researched study of an artist, Walter Sickert, whom the author believes to have been the Whitechapel serial killer, Jack the Ripper. It comes close to the "more than I wanted to know" category at times, but the detailed discussion of what is known of the victims' lives and last activities is a poignant social description. The manner of their deaths seems to add insult to injury, and probably seemed as much to the socially conscious of the time. The author herself suggests that the miserable conditions of the slums of London came into the limelight in a way that they never had before, bringing them to the attention of the public and perhaps paving the way for social change that gathered momentum in the early twentieth century.

The story is a chilling review of the evidence from the police, public document, newspaper, and family files of the period and an application of modern forensics techniques to them. As the author states, there is no statute of limitations on murder, and although all of the characters involved in the drama are long dead-most over a hundred years dead-there is still a fascination with the macabre behavior of the killer. Modern audiences are familiar with the subject of serial killers, which seem to have cropped up from time to time throughout the past century to fill our newspapers with the senseless violence that seems almost the hallmark of our age. When one reads this book, one will discover that barbarity to ones fellow human being is by no means confined to our own disturbed culture. The Ripper was never brought to trial, and Cornwell believes that many of his crimes were not even credited to him, including some of the more vicious crimes perpetrated against children and others in outlying areas of England.

At the beginning of the book, Cornwell admits to a feeling of discomfort with the evil of both the Ripper and unbalanced mental state of the artist. It's obvious that she herself is convinced of his guilt. The chapters start out organized, the discussion of the artist's early life and family providing structure. The deaths of the victims also provide a framework. By the middle of the book, however, the author seems to wander a bit. She jumps from date to date, describing a variety of events that interweave with the Ripper murders, and by the end of the book, the story just stops. It ends with the artist's strange behavior at the funeral of his second wife in the 1920's, this despite the fact that Sickert himself lived until 1942 and married a third time. It's almost as if the villainy of the Sickert character in his purposed guise of Jack the Ripper has freaked out the author, and she can barely tolerate dealing with either of them. It bespeaks of an unpleasant experience and certainly gives credence to the idea that there really is a devil and some people can in fact be evil in a deep and spiritual sense. It also suggests that Cornwell herself is an incredibly creative and imaginative person for whom writing is more than just a vocation.

While I think that Cornwell makes a good case for the guilt of the disdurbed artist Sickert, I'm not certain but that that fact arises at least as much from her ability to weave a good story and to create an ambiance of mystery around her characters as it does from the facts in her case. That the man was deeply disturbed, possibly due to childhood traumas and to a highly disfunctional family, seems quite likely. It's not impossible that the man was either autistic or even schizophrenic. That he was Jack the Ripper, I'm not so sure. Probably the most damning physical evidence is the stationary used by both the artist and Jack the Ripper in their correspondence, but as Ms Cornwell herself points out, even if the artist had written the letters to the police, it demonstrates more his rather bent sense of humor than his guilt. I also find it interesting that there appear to be no descendants to be offended by a book damning their ancestor as one of the nineteenth century's most vicious killers! There is an element of legal safety in that.

A fascinating book, but be prepared for the gruesome.

Rating:
Summary: The use of language
Review: I admit that I am not nomally a fan of true crime books, and that I have never read any of Patricia Cornwell's books before. I do, however, have a degree in English. As for the theory itself, I feel that Ms. Cornwell makes a decent arguement. There is a lack of evidence, which is to be expected when the crimes were commited so long ago and the evidence was not all kept by the authorities. My biggest problems with this book come from the format and the use of language. Ms. Cornwell skips around so much in the way she tells the story that you easily loose track of the names, dates, and events themselves. I found it dificult to keep it all straight. If it were written in more of a time-line format, it would have been much easier to follow.
Overall, the story is lost in the poor writing. Whether read for enjoyment, or historical interest, you are best to have a pen and paper handy if you want to make any sense of what you read.

Rating:
Summary: Cornwell needed an editor with a big, sharp knife
Review: That letters written by Sickert and Jack the Ripper came from the same batch of stationery, and a batch of only 24 sheets, is Cornwell's best evidence--and pretty good evidence, at that. But you could easily miss that skimming through because nobody's going to read this book word for word. Do we really need every speculation that's ever crossed her mind about what a sicky Sickert is?

I guess she couldn't get permission to reproduce the paintings of mutilated women which support her argument. Instead we get several photos of Sickert which "show his many faces"--Not. Frankly, he looks intelligent and kindly and not a bulgy-eyed maniac like, say, Ted Bundy.

My suggestion for further research: get Don Foster to do a professional comparison of Sickert's and Jack the Ripper's language and publish an article about it rather than a book.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting Observations
Review: I think the main problem with this book is the title doesn't work for the content. There isn't enough "proof" to say this case is closed - just my opinion. I admire the author's tenacity and research - and some of Sickert's paintings do illustrate a certain "chill." Creatives often can't help weaving current events into their works - whether consciously or not. This could very well be the case with Sickert - these murders may have been resting in his subconscious, and finding there way into his paintings. Who knows? The handwriting analysis may be the most convincing piece of evidence but it's acknowledged that many letters and decoys were sent to officials. Great read, stirring and peaked my curiousity, but I don't know this case can be "officially" closed.

Rating:
Summary: Circumstantial Evidence Tied Together with Imagination
Review: Ms. Cornwall should stick to writing mysteries and far, far away from trying to build a case that she alone has solved the real identity of Jack the Ripper. As a devotee' of "Ripperology" over the last five years, I have read a number of books that detail the evidence and incisively analyze clues which allegedly solved the crime. The majority of these solutions have been disemboweled at a later date by the discovery that apparent facts were only subjective opinions and did not stand up to close scrutiny. For example, many of the clues were taken directly from the journalist of the day reports which were found to be later in error (journalists were inaccurate then as now.) Unfortunately, the author does not seem to feel a need, beyond her creative imagination, to build a case that hangs together or to refute some of the excellent research or theories that others have painstakingly put together. The DNA evidence she provides is not compelling. Her analysis of Sickert's paintings and the linking of them to the imagery and symbolism surrounding the Ripper lore ignores the most likely theory, that any artists of the day with a widely acknowledged dark side would have felt compelled to either emulate or incorporate these images into his art. Her psychological detailing of the personalities of psychopaths is interesting but she again fails to tie them to Sickert's actual behavior. There are fascinating mini-essays on Victorian forensic medicine, the crushing East End poverty, and the life style of the "unfortunates" who were Ripper's victims. Some of the writing is almost stream of consciousness and drifts from topic to topic in a loose manner that is hard to follow. She ignores other likely Ripper candidates, e.g, James Maybrick, the Liverpool cotton merchant, by waving away the evidence and research with personal opinion or superficial generalizations. All in all, if you are a Ripper fan, the book will disappoint for its lack of analysis, evidence, and logic. Only the most compulsive and methodical of Ripper fans will be able to read the entire book. If you are a Cornwell fan, this book will be a long journey that ends nowhere and seems a misuse of her considerable talents.

Rating:
Summary: Can Writers Write?
Review: Given that she is a successful novelist, one might think that Patricia Cornwell would have a clue as to how to organize her arguments into a cohesive whole. However, "truth" must be harder than fiction, as this book rambles about without any rhyme or reason. It's hard to see why she even divided it into chapters, as each one contains a multitude of thoughts, facts, and surmises on a number of Ripper-related subjects, without ever making a specific point or building on previously made points to bolster her current argument. Does she prove her case? Well, she presents some interesting information, but never proves anything other than she is a better novelist than a writer of non-fiction. Was Walter Sickert the Ripper?

Let's just say that the case is still open.

Rating:
Summary: Terrible
Review: This book is simply terrible. Corwell piles up a number of "could have beens," "maybes," and "we can never know for sures" and finds that these speculations add up to her suspect being Jack the Ripper. She proudly states at one point that a Scotland Yard Official would have presented her evidence to the Crown Prosecutor. I would suggest the Crown Prosecutor would laugh the the official out of the office and suggest counseling.

What is most disturbing is that Cornwell dismisses previous efforts to identify the subject as speculative and relying on flawed notions of personality types. She indicts Sickert largely based on a psycho-babble interpretation of his lifestyle and drawings. This effort seems to me to be a 21st Century version of the phrenology which disgusts her in reviewing 19th and 20th Century efforts to identify the Ripper.

I could go on about the the substantive weaknesses as they are legion, but suffice to say, as an attorney, I could have Sickert out without presenting a case. As a former state's attorney I wouldn't bothering bringing charges. She often tries to anticipate what a defense attorney would do with her evidence. She simply shows how little she knows about defense attorneys. Her "evidence" would be shredded by any competent attorney.

From a literary standpoint, Cornwell seems to follow a lose chronology of the killings and then throws in whatever sticks to the wall: A little wife abuse here, a little deformity there, and mix it all with the fact that Sickert had a strange and dark personality (how strange for an artist) and sprinkles liberally throughout the book. She may have made an in depth analysis of these matters, but the information is so loosely presented in such a poorly organized manner that I had long since stopped caring by the end of the book.

This book is substantively weak, organizationally chaotic, and tinged with such presumptions of superiority and righteousness on behalf of the author that the final product really should not have been published. I enjoyed Cornwell's first few books, but stopped reading them because it became obvious that either her talent had peaked or she was mailing in the newer books. I tooks a chance on this book based on an review. I feel like suing the reviewer for the $7.99 I spent on the book. I'd have a better chance of winning that case than Cornwell would winning hers.