Rating: 
Summary: The mystery will never be solved...
Review: When I heard that the author spent a bit of a personal fortune researching this novel using modern forensic science, which included DNA testing, and investigative techniques I thought that after a 114 years the case might actually be solved. Boy, was I wrong. The problems that relate to this author's investigation are: the case files are 114 years old and after all these years so many have critical documents [like original autopsy reports] are missing, there isn't any physical crime scene evidence or physical evidence from bodies (like blood samples, hair fibers) to prove anything conclusively, and while it is true that an envelope does have the ripper's fingerprints there aren't any prints from the author's suspect, the german artist Walter Sickert, to compare against for a positive match. The DNA testing does provide the possibility that the ripper could have been Sickert, but fails to prove anything else otherwise conclusively. All the author really has to go on is handed down second hand accounts of Sickert (friends and relatives memoirs) and the ripper letters. The problem with the accounts is people's memories can be fallable; a group of people can all experience the same scenario and write down their thoughts afterwards and there's a good chance that all of them will remember something differently. People will add details, leave details out, or modify details when writing memoirs. The author does prove somewhat that Sickert could have been the author of the ripper letters, but she even fails to do this conclusively. I only have a 65-70% conviction that Sickert wrote those letters and in the end the argument "just because he wrote the letters doesn't make him the murderer" prevails. Some people believe that in fact the ripper didn't write any of the letters and all were hoaxes. It is possible that people who were witnesses to the crime scenes and gawking at the bodies could have pranked the police with the letters trying to take credit for the killer's work. It sounds absurd, but if you take it into consideration then the author doesn't have anything at all to argue her case. With a lack of any physical evidence (aside from the ripper letters and the memoirs) the author doesn't have any backing of empirical evidence to prove her case. In the end you have a book constrewd of nothing but inconclusive and purely speculative theorizing. Don't bother reading this book because the case is not solved (it probably never will be) and the mystery lives on...
Rating: 
Summary: "Ripper" not a "barnburner""
Review: What's not to like? Murder fans' favorite unidentified serial killer and America's bestselling crime novelist together at last? Who could resist such a pairing! I read the much-anticipated latest from Patricia Cornwell with a great deal of disappointment. The style is tangential (or the organization of the material just escapes me); the evidence to support Sickert's guilt is compelling, but doesn't make for a good read, interspersed as it is with Ms. Cornwell's insistent speculation about his behavior and the meaning/connection of events. There is no tension in this book and, despite her success as a novelist, Ms. Cornwell is neither a forensic pathologist or a psychiatrist--how does she become such an expert on the evidence, then? And where is Kay Scarpetta when we need her most?
Rating:
Summary: Boring
Review: Sadly this book goes nowhere. After the first few chapters in which Ms Cornwell attempts to make her case the book becomes a boring restatement of the premise. The book should have been no more than a 50 page magazine article. Ms. Cornwell should have saved the millions of dollars she spent on this project and donated it to something more worthy.
Rating:
Summary: Cornwell does injustice to her subject
Review: Cornwell's book, as can be seen by a quick look at the posted reviews,has done a sloppy job of examining the Jack the Ripper case. Those in search of better and more imaginative work on the Ripper case should look to From Hell by Alan Moore and The Complete Jack the Ripper by Donald Rumblelow. Moore's From Hell shows a much deeper insight into the English culture surrounding the Ripper slayings and Rumblelow's book has a much better collection of reliable facts. Cornwell would've done better to have written another cookbook; it would've cost her less money.
Rating: 
Summary: Amazing!...
Review: I love this book and have become a NEW Patricia Cornwell fan. The "Ripper" case has sparked my interest for years. Now a long awaited work like Patricia's book is a sight for sore eyes."Portrait of a Killer" is grounded in it's information, not to mention making a hell of alot of sense. With the kind of time and money that Miss Cornwell put into this project i'm not surprised if she spent a past life on this very case....in some form. READ THIS....Truly the "Ripper" case is Closed.
Rating:
Summary: Poor - at best.
Review: A poorly written account of an interesting subject. The editor should be ashamed at letting this one go to the presses. All of the "evidence" is circumstantial at best - and more precisely; ridiculous. The only value this book can be said to have, is a interesting link between Sickert and one of the hoaxed Ripper letters. Don't waste your time or money.
Rating:
Summary: Quite simply a farce
Review: Tosh! What an arrogant book. Ms Cornwell claims to solve the Jack the Ripper case, "case closed" the book jacket screams yet alas the contents are preposterously wide of the mark. There are some very silly Ripper books out there, what with the Royal Conspiracy fantasies and the Maybrick diary forgery, and this book will quietly join their ranks. Cornwell claims to have blown six million dollars on her quest, which puts me in the mind of the movie "Local Hero" where the locals band together to fleece an outsider. Has this happened to Cornwell? There are so many problems with this book I hardly know where to start. Most basic is her insistence that the Ripper letters were indeed written by the Ripper, which no other expert on the letters agrees with. She finds that most of the crank letters were in fact written by Walter Sickert and hence he is the Ripper. Trouble is the letters appear to have been written by many many hands (there are over 210 letters kept by the police) yet Cornwell claims to discern Sickert's hand in well over a hundred of them! Why? Well she can tell by the language...oh and the different handwriting? Well multiple personality types can write in many different handwritings! Fact is she never makes the case that even one single Ripper letter was in fact written by the actual killer. She makes the leap then assumes the leap is a fact. Sorry but it isn't. So even if she were to prove that Walter Sickert did in fact write any of these crank letters she still hasn't proven anything beyond the fact that Sickert might enjoy writing crank letters... But this only skims the surface of what is wrong with this book. A great deal of her "case" seems to be a very philistine reading of what art is. Sickert painted some grusome scenes therefore he must be a killer. Again what simple minded nonsense. I haven't been mugged by Martin Scorsese lately and he certainly made some violent movies. Sickert experts have demolished her readings of the paintings as well as cast doubt on whether he was even in England on the dates of the murders! Truth be told this is a rather sloppy, if expensive, libel of a decent artist. Let's hope if nothing else all the hoopla will renew interest in Sicket's paitings... The thinking is this book is so sloppy yet so arrogantly assured that it gives one pause as to Cornwell's other endeavors outside of her fiction (she claims to have founded a forensic institute). Frankly an embarassment that should soon find its way to remainder bins.
Rating: 
Summary: Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper - Case Closed
Review: Even though the writing style seems a bit unorganized, I found the actual information very interesting. Cornwell uses every scrap of evidence possible building her case to prove that the artist, Walter Sickert, was Jack the Ripper. I was very impressed by the obvious energy spent in researching all the finer details, such as, the water marks found on the various papers, details in Sickert's paintings, and outlining what facts would have been brought into focus back in that point in time. And while most won't be happy until a bloody knife is found, I do believe this book is worthy of serious review.
Rating:
Summary: And the walls keep tumbling down ...
Review: I bought "Portrait of A Killer," read it all, and was disappointed that it failed to live up to its own hype. But it's still a fascinating account of how Patricia Cornwell became yet another victim of the international Rubik's Cube known as "Who was Jack the Ripper?" She seems to have taken up some other people's theories without seriously questioning their conclusions because, after all, those people were Experts! But even an expert doesn't know everything, especially things that exist outside their own field of expertise. Here's an example. When Cornwell says that Sickert's art contains proof of his guilt, she's referring to the fact that some of his paintings contain elements which seem to echo photographs of two Ripper victims, specifically the morgue photo of Catherine Eddowes and the bedroom photo of Mary Kelly. Cornwell also claims that these photographs never appeared in print until 1972 and so, for many years, the only people who knew exactly how these women looked after death were the police and their killer. Oh, really? Academic librarian James Bunnelle has posted a reader review at Barnes and Noble that describes a book called "Vacher l'éventreur et les crimes sadiques" by Alexandre Lacassagne, which was published in 1899. Among other ghastly attractions, it contains the first published photographs of victims murdered by Jack the Ripper, namely-you guessed it!-the morgue photo of Catherine Eddowes and the bedroom photo of Mary Kelly. Now let's see here: (a) Sickert was a news freak who was fascinated by criminality and sensationalism, (b) he often worked from photographs, and (c) he was fluent in French and moved to France a year before Lacassagne's book was published in Paris. (Can you say "reasonable doubt"?) There's a good reason why real historians don't publish wild claims until they can survive an annoying little thing called "peer review" ... namely the critical response that this book is now receiving. Read it at your library.
Rating:
Summary: Vivid and interesting, but not enough connecting evidence
Review: If you were an egotistical serial killer who wrote letters to the press, you might be tempted to conceal your name in a pseudonym but without giving away your identity. So try this:
1. Take the name "Walter Sickert"
2. Remove the initials he used (W. St.) and 'l' for luck to get "ater icker"
3. Put a 'J' in front and move the 'ck' to make 'Jackter ier'
4. Now add an 'h' and 'pp' and change the spacing: 'Jack the ripper' So by replacing only 4 letters and moving 2, 'Walter Sickert' can be transformed into 'Jack the Ripper'. Pretty coincidental I would think! However, like Cornwell's book this observation only suggests that Sickert wrote a number of the Ripper letters not that he was the actual Ripper. I enjoyed Cornwell's book and it provided a vivid and interesting account of the dark side of London in the 1880s. She provides a lot of evidence that Sickert wrote letters as the Ripper, that he painted pictures to do with the Ripper, and that he might fit the profile of a serial killer. She may even have all the proof necessary to conclude that Sickert was the Ripper. However I don't believe that her arguments and the evidence presented in this book are sufficient to warrant the heading 'Case Closed'.
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