A Deadly Deception

June 15, 2019
Has Jack the Ripper struck again in Whitechapel? A psychic and her uniquely well-informed friend are on the case. London, July 17, 1889. Flower seller and sometime sleuth Constance Piper awakes from a deep sleep to hear the streets filled with the cry that Jack the Ripper has struck again. Constance's first-person narrative alternates with that of Emily Tindall, Constance's deceased mentor, who psychically guides her from beyond the grave. The victim is Old Alice Mackenzie, worker at Goulston Street Washhouse and a friend of Constance's mother, Patience. While Constance questions the hardscrabble locals and weighs the likelihood of Jack the Ripper's involvement, Emily takes the reader on a wider journey, tackling both the background of the case and the investigation of police detective Thaddeus Hawkins. Hawkins determines that the murder is a copycat killing, the work of someone "connected to the Fenian cause of Irish Home Rule." Spotting the eerie figure of a woman in black at Alice's funeral, Constance appeals to Emily to tell her whether this woman is real or a specter, bringing her closer to a solution. Constance and Hawkins have collaborated twice before (The Angel Makers, 2018, etc.), and their teaming up here adds traction to the investigation, which broadens to involve not only a Fenian bomb plot, but also the kidnapping of children for "nefarious purposes." One narrator's earnest, character-driven thriller, rich in pathos, contrasts effectively with the other's police procedural, studded with period detail.

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July 1, 2019
Eight months after Jack the Ripper’s last killing in 1888, Alice Mackenzie is found dead of wounds similar but not identical to those of his victims, in Harris’s muddled third mystery featuring flower seller Constance Piper (after 2018’s The Angel Makers). London police detective Thaddeus Hawkins investigates the possibility that at least one supposed Ripper murder, that of Mary Jane Kelly, is the work of Irish nationalists. Constance, who was friends with both Mackenzie and Kelly, discovers that each of them had Irish connections and that Kelly had foreknowledge of her peril. The more Hawkins and Constance learn, the more certain they become that they’re facing not a single deranged killer but a conspiracy that encompasses the country’s elite. Heavily reliant on events that occur before the book opens, the plot requires copious backstory and a glut of secondary characters. Harris unfortunately focuses on overcomplicated logistics, giving some of the series’ most appealing elements—including the dynamics between Constance and Hawkins—short shrift. This is a lesser entry in the large field of Ripper-related mysteries. Agent: Melissa Jeglinski, Knight Agency.