I, Ripper by Stephen Hunter

Fall, 1888. The London slum known at Whitechapel is a breeding ground of Judys (prostitutes) and their Johns, a cesspool of gin, manure, and rotting animal carasses, a target-rich environment for thieves. For a thrupence, a Judy would guide a John into an alley, bend over, and give her John a couple minutes of release from whatever drove him to such a place. 

But over the course of 4 or 5 months, a new visitor to Whitechapel made a name from himself. He would make his bargain with a Judy, follow her into an alley, may or may not take advantage of the agreed upon services, whip out a blade, draw a back and forth slice out of her throat before, then, carved up her torso from groin to throat, stringing out her entrails before slipping away in the darkness. 

Five Judys. The display of his artwork with a blade becoming more extensive and dramatic with each successive Judy. “Here is the message I deliver for you to contemplate. I am anarchy. I am fear. I am carnage, slaughter, destruction for its own sake . . . I am you.”

The coppers are unable to come up with a clue, at least until the killer leaves a note in which JEWS is misspelled as JUWES. 

Late 19th century London has dozens of newspapers and tabloids, each eager to be the first to present something new on the killer. George is a reasonable reviewer of the arts and music, literate and knowledgable, not the typical hack reporter who works the streets. The publisher of The Star senses that the first killing is the beginning of a message to London and sends George out to the murder scene. 

George uses the Star’s reputation to squeeze past the penny-a-line freelancers (that era’s paparazzi), identifying himself to the detectives as ‘Jeb’ (to avoid confusion with his critic identity) and forms a cautious working relationship with the police, even to the point of them looking for him in the crowd of reporters after future killings to bring him in to view an untainted crime scene.

In one of those meeting within a newspaper between reporter, editors and publisher, the decision is made that to help boost sales even more, the killer needs a name, Something that will be associated with the paper, strike some lingering gut level horror in their readers, and just maybe, something that might stand the test of time. Jeb takes a while (“I was a pickle absent the brine, a desiccated raisin . . . my brain was bereft of electricity.”), but Jeb uses all his creative juices:

Jack The Ripper.

At a party for the well heeled elite of London, The Star’s publisher brings Jeb along  so that Jeb might get some material for how the upper crust views the murders in Whitechapel, a part of town none of the partygoers would frequent. Here, Jeb meets the illustrious Professor Thomas Dare, a professor of linguistics and phonetics - language. 

Dare is a bit of a dandy amongst academics, loved and admired, well dressed and well off, but also abhorred by some in academe for some of his research history and methods. But he had his convictions. He hoped to “convert the world to one language that all would speak without accent or indication of geography, class or origin.” Further, he “wanted to do away with tribalism, nationalism, paternalism, capitalism, communism, militarism, vegetarianism, colonialism, ismism, anything that could take an -ism as its tail end.” because  “Voice is communication, communication is civilization. Without the one, we lose the other as those festivals of slaughter called wars attest.” (were Professor Dare a real person and alive today, I suspect he’d be a charter member of the Bilderberg Group). 

Nonetheless, Professor Dare is taken with both the killings and with reporter Jeb, together they form a sort of real life version of that emerging English detective duo, Holmes and Watson. Professor Dare sees little clues in the language of notes left by the killer and, with Jeb’s first hand account of the murder scene, starts to formulate a portrait in his head, maybe the first real attempt at a criminal profile. 

Based on the profile, Jeb and Dare have produced a list of three possibles and start surveilling without a clue what to do if they happen to catch Jack in the act.

Regular readers of MRB know that Stephen Hunter is firmly entrenched in our power rotation - he writes it, we read it. Well known for his series on the Swagger family (father Earle of the Arkansas State Police of the early 50s and son Bob Lee, the #2 sniper in Vietnam and go-to investigator for the FBI’s Nick Memphis when Nick needs results that the law might make it difficult for the FBI to get). He also has a few standalone novels as well as some non-fiction. What Hunter is really known for is his encyclopedic knowledge of rifles, especially those used by snipers. Hunter is to rifles what Clancy was to more destructive tools of the military. 

He as sort of ventured into historical novels based on actual occurrences. The Third Bullet sent Bob Lee to Dallas to investigate JFK’s murder. Snipers Honor was about a (real) Russian sniper in WWII (OK, Bob Lee was sort of source material for a reporter doing a story on WWII). 

No Bob Lee here. Hunter presents the story in two parts. The views of the circumstances are the notes Jeb is assembling for a book 24 years after Jack’s reign in London. The second part is made up of Jack’s journal. So Hunter takes the two and assembles his tale, going back and forth between Jeb’s memoir and Jack’s journal to assemble a chronological presentation. 

And it’s not just the back and forth that solidifies Hunter as one of today’s very best storytellers. Hunter’s research of the era is not just about facts (provided in eight concluding pages of books, documents, newspapers, websites, etc.), it’s also about the language of Victorian era London, language that was still heavily influenced by Dickens and other notable authors of the mid-late 19th century England. That means, prepare to be immersed in the dialogue and description reminiscent not of today, but of nearly 150 years ago. It took me a while to get used to the rhythm of the writing, but once the presentation was no longer so complex, the lyricism became second nature. Don’t give up after the first couple chapters. Let Hunter take you back in time. The journey is well worth it. 

Two final thoughts. First, Jeb is what George’s little sister used to call him when both were children. Keep going because Hunter reveals “Jeb’s” identity, if you read close. Second, Hunter’s last line in the acknowledgements (you do read those, don’t you?) may give a clue to a future title: “ . . . since you’ve done all this research for a novel on Jack The Ripper, do you know who he really was?” to which Hunter replies, “Of course I do. Watch for it. It’s going to be fun.”

We will.

ECD