I, Ripper

March 23, 2015
Set in London in the fall of 1888, Hunter’s intriguing standalone provides fresh insights into the Jack the Ripper case through three different, though not always coherent, perspectives. An opportunistic reporter, who refers to himself as Jeb, gets a break when he’s promoted from being a substitute music critic to being the lead journalist on the Ripper killings. Interspersed with Jeb’s narrative are extracts from the killer’s diary, whose mannered language (“Truly, no creature can understand its own obliteration”) requires a hefty suspension of disbelief. The third voice is that of a prostitute, who describes the atmosphere in the East End in unsent letters written to her estranged mother. For the most part, Hunter (Dirty White Boys) sticks closely to the historical record. The eventual revelation of the serial butcher’s identity may stretch credulity, but details such as the ingenious speculations about the graffiti message that the murderer left on the night he slaughtered two prostitutes are sure to fascinate Ripperologists. Agent: Esther Newberg, ICM.

April 1, 2015
Hunter (Sniper's Honor, 2014, etc.) sets aside long guns and MST-100 scopes for a Sheffield blade and then follows Jack the Ripper into the mean streets of Victorian London. "I owe it all to Jack," says Jeb. I will "never, ever return to being the nonentity I had been my first 32 years." Jeb (a nom de plume) is an acerbic part-time music critic for London's evening tabloid, Star, when he's assigned a story about prostitutes-Judys-being murdered in Whitecastle, hangout of "boardwalkers, strawers, grease removers...nostrum vendors, fortune-tellers, French polishers...[and] various classes of lurkers and peepers." London's 1888 autumn of blood unreels through Jeb's memoir, Jack's purloined diary, and letters from Mairsian, a gin-addled Judy. Mixed in with fog-clamped alleyways, brick alcoves, and Jack's gory knife work is a bit of Hunter's humor; noting a corpse's missing organs, Jeb says, "Or he's eaten them already, with a fine claret and field beans from the South of France." A snob, a wicked ironic wit, Jeb thinks he possesses a "higher mental function, exposure to education, mastery of culture." The supercilious hack's name-and what's to be made of the memoir-is a surprise when finally revealed. Jeb and his co-investigator, professor of phonetics Thomas Dare, conclude that Jack "is the consequence of empire" and find suspicious characters among British Afghan veterans. That allows Hunter, considering British generalship, to "cast a snide eye on Queen Vicky's propensity to have a Tommy stick a bayonet in the guts of every yellow, black, or brown heathen who defied her." Add Sherlock Holmes, deductive reasoning, a classic frame-up, spot-on Cockney dialogue, erudite social observations, and pervasive anti-Semitism, and Bob's your uncle. Hunter solves the crime, and the Prince of Wales wasn't the culprit.

May 1, 2015
Former film critic and author of the Bob Lee and Earl Swagger thrillers (and others), Hunter propels readers back in time to the horrific Whitechapel murders attributed to Jack the Ripper. Written in the first-person perspectives of Jack himself, an unwary prostitute, and an up-and-coming newspaper journalist, this absolutely riveting account of the killings, the hysteria, and an insider's attempt to expose the Ripper brings a fresh eye to an old and well-examined unsolved mystery. Using a nineteenth-century writing style, the author heightens suspense with a careful, step-by-step, almost academic analysis, edging the characters closer to the solution that readers will see coming well before the narrator does. Meanwhile, Saucy Jack describes in detail his violent, psychotic need to slice, repeatedly stab, and eviscerate prostitutes. Not for the weak-stomached, this killer's view of serial murders is the stuff of nightmares. Authentic in tone, well-researched, and darkly atmospheric of Victorian London, this historical thriller combines the quiet plausibility of the psychopath in Thomas Harris' Red Dragon (1981) with the menacing tone of Kenneth Cameron's The Frightened Man (2009).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

December 1, 2014

Hunter's new title (after this year's Sniper's Honor) blends the reimagined life story of Jack the Ripper (again!) with an Irish journalist's coverage of the case. The retired chief film critic for the Washington Post, Hunter won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism.

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