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Title: Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper -- Case Closed by Patricia Cornwell, Kate Burton ISBN: 0-399-14960-0 Publisher: Putnam Pub Group (Audio) Pub. Date: 11 November, 2002 Format: Audio CD Volumes: 5 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 2.41 (452 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: 3 stars for effort, zero for credibility
Comment: 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: 3
Summary: interesting but tedious
Comment: Patricia Cornwell does a good job presenting the evidence against Sickert, the man she believes is Jack the Ripper. However, it was very hard to get through this book. She builds a convincing case, but the text itself is very dry. I felt at times like I was reading a textbook. It will pick up at certain parts and before you know it, you have read 2 or 3 chapters. Then it will take a week to get through the next chapter. I felt myself reading lines over and over again because it completely lost my interest. I was stuck on page 170 for days. I think she could have summarized more in areas such as the chapter on the letters and the types of paper used. Overall, I think she does a great job in portraying the evidence in many different aspects of a criminal case, (motif, opportunity, letter/writing profiles, personality traits, the inner workings of the psychopathic mind, etc.) although I think it would have been much more interesting and enjoyable to read had she wrote it in the form of a crime novel from the perspective of Dr. Kay Scarpetta, as was her original intention. The book does however, leave you knowing more than ever about the life and times of Jack the Ripper and how it was to live in London during that depressing time in the history of England.
Rating: 3
Summary: CASE CLOSED?
Comment: Patricia Cornwell's highly publicized and rather controversial look at the infamous Jack the Ripper killings is an interesting book into which the author has obviously poured countless hours of hard, painstaking research and leg work, and that, combined with the writer's evident sense of justice, is to be much praised and admired. As a thoughtful examination of one possible angle on the Ripper murders the book largely succeeds; as the airtight posthumous indictment it is supposed to be, however, it comes up short.
Cornwell makes several highly questionable decisions in making her case. She relies heavily on some rather tenuous DNA from the time of the killings, evidence which in this scenario is far too thin for the emphasis the author attempts to hang on it. Her analysis of the suspect's psychological makeup and actions during the period in question are composed largely of speculation and guesswork, devoid of the kind of hard evidence I had hoped to discover. Cornwell's confidence in the numerous "Ripper Letters" the police received at the time is hard to swallow, and requires some highly unlikely--though admittedly not impossible--legerdemain on the part of her suspect. Most disturbing is that Cornwell seems to have chosen this suspect very quickly after looking at the Ripper case file, and one has the feeling she has then simply rearranged much of the available information to suit her own presupposition. That her suspect was at least eccentric and may have had some glaring personal deficiencies is hardly debatable, but that does not automatically make him a serial killer.
As a literary work Cornwell's book suffers from a pair of serious drawbacks. First, the arrogance with which she approaches the case is nearly embarrassing. She shows no respect whatsoever for others who have published theories on the infamous Whitechapel slayings, and very little for the police who actually worked on the case at the time. Cornwell's apparent disdain for those who have gone before her is annoying and frequently distracting. Second, the book is badly organized and heavily padded, as the author jumps from one train of thought to the next in no recognizable pattern so as to frequently leave the reader backpedaling to try to catch up, a problem exacerbated by the fact that the book is about a hundred pages too long. Many of Cornwell's personal commentaries and historical notes are repeated over and over to no obvious purpose. A tighter, more pointed text would have benefitted the author's case immensely.
Despite its glaring weaknesses, "Portrait of a Killer" is a commendable book in many respects. I would certainly recommend it to Ripper buffs, students of Victorian England, or mystery fans in general. If the author's evidence is not irrefutable, it is at least thought-provoking, and evidently Ms. Cornwell continues to follow up on some of the evidence as we speak, so perhaps an updated edition will tie up some of the loose ends. Maybe she's even right. Time will perhaps tell. But as of right now "Portrait of a Killer," though admirable, hardly lives up to its subtitle. A thoughtful, well-researched re-examination of the most infamous serial killer of all time? Certainly. But case closed? *No.*
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Title: Blow Fly: A Scarpetta Novel by Patricia Cornwell ISBN: 0399150897 Publisher: Putnam Pub Group Pub. Date: 13 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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Title: Postmortem by Patricia Cornwell ISBN: 0671023616 Publisher: Pocket Books Pub. Date: 01 April, 1998 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: The Last Precinct by Patricia Cornwell ISBN: 0425180638 Publisher: Berkley Pub Group Pub. Date: 03 July, 2001 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Isle of Dogs by Patricia Cornwell ISBN: 0425182908 Publisher: Berkley Pub Group Pub. Date: October, 2002 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Body of Evidence by Patricia Cornwell ISBN: 0671038567 Publisher: Pocket Books Pub. Date: 01 May, 1999 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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