Rating: 
Summary: Back to the bookstore
Review: I very seldom, if ever, re-sell a book. But this Cornwell book was one big disappointment. Not only did she fail miserably to make a convincing argument for her theory on Jack the Ripper, she did it in the most tedious and boring way. Arrrrgh. Of all the "candidates" for Jack the Ripper, her theory is the weakest and certainly not up to the investigative work she writes into her fictional Kay Scarpetta. I have always enjoyed Ms. Cronwell's books, but this one goes back on the market. What a waste. If you want to read a more compelling and convincing theory, pick up The Diary of Jack the Ripper by Maybrick.
Rating: 
Summary: I nearly slit my throat
Review: I nearly slit my throat trying to read this poorly written, disorganized, and disappointing book! It appears as if not one word was edited out of this ridiculous, plodding tome that could have been one third its current size. The book reads as if Cornwell took all of her voluminous research notes, taped them all together, and just typed it up using some kind of stream-of-consciousness technique known only to her. The fake sepia-tone illustrations have lost a great deal of important detail seemingly for the sake of a better uniformly "artsy-fartsy" look. Many of the important primary documents would have been more convincing and much easier to see if they had been carefully and professionally photographed. Cornwell jumps around, not necessarily discussing events in chronological order, with many irrelevant asides thrown in between the important points she is trying to make. She discusses probable additional victims, yet doesn't bother to provide any kind of comprehensive, dated timeline or chronology for the reader to refer to. The same kind of timeline or chronology should have been provided for the most important of the hundreds of letters the Ripper allegedly wrote. All of that said, I believe that Sickert did the awful deeds, but I don't think Cornwell even came close to making a case. It may be in there somewhere, but someone else will have to find it, and rewrite the book. I hope someone from Scotland Yard takes up the ball. Because I'm a librarian, I know this is classified as a non-fiction book; but then, mythology is non-fiction too.
Rating:
Summary: Case Closed? Emphatically NO!
Review: The Whitechapel murders committed by Jack the Ripper in the autumn of 1888 have fascinated and repelled ever since. To the point now where it ranks with the Marie Celeste and The Bermuda triangle as one of the worlds most perplexing mysteries. According to the blurb, "Patricia Cornwell has applied the rigorous discipline of twenty-first century police investigation to the extant material". "An excellent idea" you might think, and you'd be right. But there are so many things wrong with this book that I hardly know where to start. Ms Cornwell takes as her hypothesis that the Impressionist artist Walter Richard Sickert was in fact the notorious serial killer who has become the stuff of modern nightmares and goes all out to prove it. As part of her evidence she presents Sickert's "Camden Town Murders" series of paintings, not as the artist exploring his obsession with the murder of a prostitute in Camden, around the corner from where Sickert was living at the time, but with the artist recalling (or perhaps gloating?) about the Ripper murders some twenty years earlier and maybe his part in them. She compares facial mutilation inflicted on Jack the Ripper's fourth victim, Catherine Eddows with the play of the light on the face of the woman in one of Sickert's paintings and uses this to claim that Sickert was drawing from memory. Well, I'm sorry Ms Cornwell, that horse just won't run! You're hypothesis falls down in several crucial areas, · The Psycho-Sexual Serial Killers is indeed "Mr Nobody", excessively so! Killing is their only expressive outlet. Aesthetic young artists don't tend to turn to butchery in order to satisfy their needs in this regard, their art more than fulfills this. · Sickert's use of prostitutes as models is also held up to scrutiny, but this was normal for artists of the impressionist school. Degas, Renoir, Manet and many of Sickert's contempories used prostitutes as models and not only them. Raphael painted his Madonna's from the prostitutes of Rome and the faces of Botticelli's angels are those of the rent boys of Quattro cento Florence. · Ms Cornwell claims to have found DNA from one of the Ripper letters that can be matched to Sickert. But this sample was taken from a "Possible" Ripper letter, (opinion on its authenticity is divided) and not from the genuine articles in the black museum, which have been heat sealed, thus destroying any possibility (with current technology anyway) of obtaining a sample. Considering Sickert's prolific letter writing and collection of pseudonyms the possibility of him having written a hoax letter at the time can not be ruled out · The artist's alleged hatred of women is shown up in a letter he wrote to Jacques-Emile Blanche when he was painting nudes in Venice at the beginning of the twentieth century "From 9 to 4, it is an uninterrupted joy, caused by these pretty, little, obliging models who laugh and un-embarrassedly be themselves while posing like angels. They are glad to be there, and are not in a hurry." This doesn't sound like a serial killer describing the objects of his desires, but rather like a normal man having fun. · Ms Cornwell's assertion that Sickert was infertile is all but destroyed by the fact that Sickert almost certainly fathered a child by Mme. Augustine Villain a fishmonger he lived with during his time in Neuville. · MS Cornwell states in this book that Sickert's paintings are clearly of the Ripper murders, but as with everything else, people see what they want to see. "Wolf Vanderlinden" in his excellent essay put this very well. "In The Camden Town Murder, also titled What Shall We Do For the Rent? (circa 1908). The painting is of a man sitting on the edge of a bed, eyes downcast. Behind him lies a naked woman. With the title The Camden Town Murder, the woman is obviously dead and the man is either her killer, filled with remorse, or her lover who has found the body and who sits in stunned mourning. Change to the alternate title - What Shall We Do For the Rent? - and now the picture is totally different. The man sits on the bed feeling the weight of his financial problems while his wife or girlfriend lies next to him, her hand gently resting on his knee, offering him some small, tender support" · Ms Cornwell states that Walter Sickert always drew from life, things he'd seen and in that she'd absolutely right. Walter Sickert only painted subjects that he had seen or had seen photographs of, a subtle but significant difference. Photographs of Jack the Ripper's last two victims were published in France as far back as 1899 in a book about the crimes of Joseph Vacher, the so-called French Ripper. At that time Sickert was living in France and was fluent in the French language. Is it unreasonable to assume that Sickert, a true crime buff from his boyhood could have owned or seen a copy of that book in the 6 years between it's publication and the painting of the first of the "Camden Town Murders" series that Ms Cornwell bases so much of her theory on? I suppose that the central problem with this book is that the author has made up her mind before she boots up her word processor and spends the book trying to convince the reader that she's right rather than weighing up the evidence and exploring any possible alternatives.
Rating:
Summary: Where is the Cornwell I enjoyed reading
Review: Ms Cornwell book on Jack the Ripper does exactly what other reviews have stated! It is not laid out logically so the reader can easily follow her evidence and research She jumps around and appears to force down her opinion on who Jack the Ripper was I didn't finish her last book and I almost didn't finish this one! Very sad I truly enjoyed her first efforts at writing where she researched the forensic side of crime I thought I'd give this book a try but am very disappointed She should look at Bob Snow's book "Searching for Carol Beckwith" and see how well the format and lay out is and how the reader prefers to make their own conclusions
Rating:
Summary: By Far the Worst JtR Casebook Ever!
Review: I couldn't even finish this book. Cornwell broke the cardinal rule of scientific investigation: she started with a THEORY, and tried to find evidence to support it, rather than starting with the evidence and trying to build a theory that matches all of it. Every other paragraph contained something like "Well I have absolutely no proof, but it's certain that X did Y." How wrong can you get?! For someone like Cornwell, who prides herself on her realism and scientific truths, this book is an embarassment. I got so sick of mentally responding "can we say the word 'coincidence'?" to each sentence (i.e. Sickert painted a woman with a man coming up behind her, ergo Sickert is Jack the Ripper because his paintings show violent tendencies; Sickert spent time in France and there is a Ripper letter *supposedly* from France, ergo Sickert wrote it) that I finally just gave up, totally exasperated. I respect and enjoy your fiction immensely, Ms. Cornwell. But don't give up your day job to write nonfiction.
Rating:
Summary: Serious disappointment!!!
Review: I won't even get into whether or not the evidence Cornwell submitted proves that Sickert was Jack the Ripper. What drove me absolutely nuts was all the conjecture. Egad. How many times did she say someone could have, would have if only, might have, etc. All these things were made up in her mind, as if she's writing fiction. Hey, wait, that's what she normally does! What a coincidence. Seriously, all of her possible scenarios, many of which are just extraneous information, just detract from the presentation of "evidence". She should have written this as a newspaper article, not as a novel. The other really weird thing is part of this conjecture involved whether the Ripper started cutting a person up either here or there, and what that person may have felt. Yikes. First, she's completely guessing, second, what's the point of such sickening guesswork? I made myself finish this book. She might have a good point, might have found the killer, but could have written about what she found in, oh, say 20 pages.
Rating:
Summary: A Disappointment at the End
Review: I'm not a fan of Cornwell's fiction, but heard her discuss this book on Imus last month and was curious enough to read the book, that promises to bring modern crime solving methods into play, but in the end, depends more on speculation than proof, and proves a disappointment. While I do not doubt that the author really and truly believes artist Sickert to be the Ripper, her evidence, though thought-provoking, simply isn't conclusive. I'm a Sherlock Holmes fan and at some points in the book considered that should Mr. Holmes be real, some of the "evidence" that Cornwell applies to Sickert could just as well be pinned on Sherlock (i.e., he lived in the same city, was a well-known miscogynist, loved sending telegrams, obsessively read the newspaper.. etc.) In the end, what we have here is enough evidence to present a modest case to a grand jury, but certainly not enough to label a long-dead artist a psychopathic murderer. I'd also like to note that Cornwell's apparent outpouring of compassion for the Ripper's "unfortunate" victims rings a little false, given that she displays their gruesome autopsy photos so blatantly, which is surely as exploitive as you can get. God knows these women were exploited enough in life; did they have to be violated not only in their horrendous deaths, but ever after?
Rating: 
Summary: Too Tedious for Me
Review: I'm an avid reader and typically read 1-2 books per week. I've read many of Cornwell's previous Kay Scarpetta novels so I was thrilled when I saw this book available at a new library in my area and snatched up a copy. My thrill quickly faded to disappointment and my eagerness for the knowledge the normally brilliant Cornwell imparts in her writing quickly turned to boredom and tedium as I tried to slog through her far-too-detailed, gory descriptions and minutae. It seemed that Cornwell was being overly verbose as a way to justify the million or so dollars I heard she spent trying (and I feel she succeeded, I just couldn't finish this beast) to prove her theory that Walter Sickert, a well-known painter of the Victorian era, was none other than Jack the Ripper. I made it through a little over 200 pages before I caved, ready to scream, "OKAY, ALREADY, I GET IT -- YOU NAILED YOUR MAN!" The book jumps around from victim to victim going into WAY too much detail about their injuries and supposition upon supposition as to why the hapless British police couldn't determine what Cornwell used millions of dollars, modern-day technology, 20th-century forensic science and psychology to prove. Hey, they did the best they could. They didn't have much to work with. The history lessons early in the book about the sociological fabric and descriptions of Victorian-era England was, to me, more interesting than her tedious description of why she felt Sickert was the killer. I agree with her, he probably was, but at this point in time -- who really cares? She could have made her point just as well and made it a lot more readable and more quickly in about half the number of pages. For those who enjoy her usual fast-paced, gripping style, this book will be a disappointment. Save yourself a lot of time and twenty-five bucks.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointed and Disturbed
Review: After seeing Cornwell on ABC's Primetime, I was intrigued and keenly awaited this book. I have to say, however, that I don't believe she really makes her case. She uses bits and pieces of data to support her theory and dismisses others out of hand when they don't suit her needs. Perhaps the most damning bit of evidence is the art of Walter Sickert which in and of itself is disturbing, although little of it is seen in the book. I found myself slogging through the last half.
Rating:
Summary: Cornwell's Case Faulty
Review: Patricia Cornwell's recently released Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper Case Closed claims to have brought closure to the century old Jack the Ripper murders. She stakes her claim on the innumerable number of "coincidences" tying Jack the Ripper to Walter Sickert, a famous British painter. She applies modern forensics, psychological profiling, and DNA sampling to once and for all resolve the identity of Whitechapel's infamous butcher. Throughout the book, Cornwell's talents as a best-selling fiction writer are evident. Her descriptions of 19th century culture and forensic technology are extraordinarily vivid, with a rich, story-like detail throughout. Biographical sketches, the biting taunts of the Ripper letters, and eye-witness accounts are impressively presented and bring to life the circumstances surrounding the crimes. But little is offered that will supplant a host of other theories on the actual identity of Ripper. Cornwell's logic is faulty and at times self-contradicting. Oversights are common and alternative scenarios that point away from Sickert are either unmentioned or ignored. Contrary evidence is manipulated until it somehow points back to Sickert, and the validity of every point hinges on a profane number of conjectures and speculations, few of which are supported by a single scrap of evidence.
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