Three recent crime novels re-visit one of the great unsolved mysteries of all time.
The Empty Mirror by J. Sydney Jones takes place in fin-de-sicle 1892 Vienna, a city terrorized by a serial killer whom the press calls “Vienna’s Jack the Ripper.” Four badly mutilated bodies have been found.
When the painter Gustav Klimt’s female model becomes the fifth victim, the police arrest the artist for the murders. Klimt’s lawyer, Karl Werthen, has an ace up his sleeve. Dr. Hans Gross, the real-life criminology pioneer, has agreed to assist him in investigating the bizarre crimes. Together, they must not only clear Klimt’s name but also follow the trail of a killer that leads them in the most surprising of directions.
Other historical personages appear as well, including psychiatrist Richard von-Krafft-Ebing, Mark Twain, Zionist founder Theodor Herzl, and Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
The Publishers Weekly starred review says “Jones's absorbing whodunit succeeds both as a mystery and as a fascinating portrait of a traditional society in ferment.”
Lyndsey Faye’s Dust and Shadow is set in London in the autumn of 1888. The savage slaughter of two prostitutes in London's East End piques Sherlock Holmes' curiosity. These are the fledgling days of tabloid journalism, and a disreputable journalist subsequently accuses Holmes of being the Ripper. Holmes is wounded in Whitechapel during an attempt to catch the savage monster, and, stripped of his credibility, has no choice but to break every rule in a desperate race to find "The Knife" before it is too late.
In The Frightened Man by Kenneth Cameron, rumors are flying that Jack the Ripper has returned when the mutilated body of a teenaged prostitute is found in London’s East End.
It is now 1900, and London is a sprawling, chaotic city, the perfect place for a man like Denton, an American with a violent past, to obtain some much desired anonymity. But his earlier notoriety as the author of several dark novels and an earlier career as a Western gunslinger sometimes prompt unwanted parties to seek him out.
When a terrified man shows up one evening and says that he is being pursued by the Ripper, Denton dismisses him as yet another lunatic. But then, disgusted by the lack of police concern after the girl’s body is found, Denton decides to find the murderer.
In a starred review, Kirkus Reviews says “Denton is a hero whose unheroic side only makes his character more appealing."
