Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper -- Case Closed

Rating:
Summary: Proof in the negative
Review: This book is an unorganized list of factoids and speculation. I kept waiting for the punchline, but her "case" falls apart because of her approach of assuming the positive by attempting to prove the negative. Her continual statements such as "I see no reason why Sickert wouldn't have been there. . ." get extremely tedious and increasingly unconvincing. She can't prove Sickert was in Whitechapel by failing to find him elsewhere. She can't prove he wrote the Ripper letters just because he was a talented artist who could have written in many different styles. The only things she DID prove was that forensic science was abysmal and that most people didn't care about the women who were murdered.

There is no smoking gun - just a bunch of could've would've should've.

Rating:
Summary: DISAPPOINTING!
Review: I generally enjoy Cornwell's Scarpetta novels, finding them well-researched and intriguing. I also enjoy historical discussions of the Jack the Ripper murders and his possible identities. I found this book to be completely unorganized and poorly written. I was also skeptical of many of her assertions of "facts", wishing that she had substantiated more. I shut the book believing that Sikert was indeed a disturbed individual, but unconvinced that he was beyond a doubt Jack the Ripper.

Rating:
Summary: Repellent
Review: Cornwell has clearly gone off the deep end. She has come to the mistaken conclusion that first, she is Kay Scarpetta and that second, the things that makes up for her (truly wonderful) novels are actually true. The result is a tangled batch of supposition that reads like libel.

Her method is to pick out something about her Victim (eg the accused), for example that he had a fistula. She prefaces her commentary with a disclaimer that nothing she is about to write is true, then delves into a "if the fistula was this bad, and was of thus and so type, and if all the operations were adequately botched, then he'd be so upset that it is reasonable to assume that he'd go off and kill lots of women." This type of diatribe will go on for ten pages or so, during which time she shifts from an "if" voice to an absolute and accusatory voice.

A caveat is that despite her historical novel approach to the subject, the accused may very well be guilty. She does, however, a disservice to her case by confusing the product of her imagined investigations with reality. That confusion shifts the novel from a non-fiction piece to a blended book where it is unclear at any moment whether the evidence provided is real or supposition. Additionally distressing is that the accused has been dead for some time now, and is not in a position to indicate that these suppositions are untrue.

Cornwell writes a very good novel, and researches her subjects well. The errors in this case are driven by those excellent skills; she is adept at creating a situation where the evidence indicates the guilt of the subject. Unfortunately, the accused in this case is a real person, yet the "evidence" is largely the product of a very confused author. What would otherwise be a compelling novel becomes little more than mud-slinging. Cornwell may be correct in choosing her target, but the confusion that she suffers, in thinking that what she makes up for a novel is permissable when accusing a real person, makes the book unreadable.

Rating:
Summary: Term Paper
Review: This book would be perfect if you are into reading term papers. I personally enjoy the Kay Scarpetta series and thought this books was too dry and boring to say the least.

Rating:
Summary: A Waste of 28 Bucks!
Review: Fortunately, they weren't my 28 bucks. Borrowed my sister's copy of this book. Not history, not fiction. Just pure exploitive, gratuitously gossipy character assassination. Cornwell is fortunate that Sickert has no living heirs to silence this destruction of an artist's reputation.

No footnotes, a lot of opinion and little else to persuade the reader of Cornwell's illogical conclusion. And, even if Cornwell could convince her audience (and she doesn't) that Sickert authored the Ripper letters, it is still a huge deductive leap to assume that the author of the letters was the killer.

I was also shocked to learn that Cornwell bought some of Sickert's paintings and destroyed them in the failed attempt to extract forensic evidence.

Cornwell is not a scientist, art historian nor historian. She should stick with her brand of weakly written fiction.

Do I have to give it even one star?

Rating:
Summary: Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper - Case Closed
Review: I found the book compelling, well-told, researched and credible. Her depiction of l9th century London slums is bleak but when one visits some of those places today, they appear rather dismal still, even in daytime.

Rating:
Summary: Not as pitiful as Isle of Dogs
Review: After Isle of Dogs which I pre-ordered, I will never buy Patricia Cornwell without checking it out in a bookstore first. I perused this book and decided against the purchase. I hope Patricia Cornwell will return to her fiction which I and my friends used to wait for with baited breath.

Rating:
Summary: Hung Jury?
Review: Did Scotland Yard's John Grieve (to whom the book is dedicated) use Patricia Cornwell? The Yard wouldn't reopen this case, but Grieve saw an opportunity and moved quickly -- give Cornwell access to all the Ripper files and let her do what The Yard did not. Point her directly towards Walter Sickert and, voila! (Did Grieve mention only Walter Sickert's name?)

"When you go after the King, you'd better bring him down." Cornwell's book is probative, not conclusive. Interesting, not compelling. Contrary to her statement, "He is caught," he is not caught. Cornwell ignores Occam's razor at her peril.

The bibliography contains neither Stephen Knight's work, Jack the Ripper; the Final Solution, 1976, nor Colin Wilson's A Casebook of Murder, 1969. Knight's book became problematic -- Freemasonry, Gull, grapes, etc., but Knight did bring Walter Sickert into play. Knight was disturbed by Sickert's paintings and felt Sickert may have been the murderer. (Knight also claims his primary source was Joseph Sickert, Walter's illegitimate son. Joseph Sickert recanted his story, but did Joseph state he was not related to Sickert?)

Wilson concluded that Ripper was not a renowned Londoner and his identity may, alas, be known only to history.

Footnotes. You read a sentence like, "Nothing mattered to Sickert unless it somehow affected Sickert." Source? Sickert's nephew, John Lessore? (Lessore thought the idea that Sickert is the Ripper was "rubbish.") "The anticipated connubial bliss of the flamboyant artistic genius . . . James McNeill Whistler must have been disconcerting to his former errand boy-apprentice [Sickert.]" Source?

"One might almost have called [Sickert] pretty, except for his mouth, which could narrow into a hard, cruel line." We see Sickert photos and you could look at one and, yes, "a hard, cruel line." You could then look at that same photo and, no, that's not a hard, cruel line. (Are there photos of Sickert smiling? They are not in this book.)

Other authors have read things into Sickert's paintings; Rorschach revisited? Sickert's piece, "Ennui" -- there is a painting on the wall behind the two subjects and Cornwell says if you look closely at the background painting-within-a-painting, you'll see a man coming up behind the woman there. You see no such thing. You need to get on-line, copy "Ennui" into photosuite -- increase contrast until an image of a man's head appears behind the woman. The problem is the "figure" isn't rendered in the same style as the rest of the painting.

In another drawing, we're told it's "a man stabbing a woman to death." Find a knife in the man's hand. (The piece is from Oswald Sickert's collection. Oswald was Walter Sickert's father.) Alongside the knife-attack sketch, a drawing of "a brute lunging for a woman." It looks more like a woman being solicitous of a chap who has fallen into a pal's arms. (Again, from Oswald's collection.)

Take "Persuasion," from Walter Sickert's collection. Is the chap whispering sweet-somethings to a scantily clad woman? She's alive and likes what she's hearing. (Cornwell ties this painting to a murder in Camden Town, 1907, and Walter Sickert.)

Joseph Sickert is problematic to Cornwell. If Walter Sickert did father a child, then he wasn't rendered impotent as a result of surgery for hypospadias (a penile fistula.) If Sickert was potent, then Whistler's marriage and happiness may have been of no import to Sickert. This is important. (Some of Sickert's contemporaries describe him as a ladies' man, a flirt, not afraid of a good time.)

Sickert may have had complications with a fistula in ano. His surgeon, Alfred Cooper, specialized in anal fistulas. There were qualified penile surgeons in London and the Sickert family had the means to send Walter to the best specialist.

There is no DNA evidence, and Sickert was cremated. (Cornwell may write a sequel if more evidence appears. But every time pieces of Ripper evidence are "declassified," released, whole pieces "grow legs.") Cornwell found some "egg white," but not the "egg yolk."

She found mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) traces in an etching on a Ripper letter and matches between an allegedly authentic Ripper letter and letters handled by Sickert. (Cornwell sets herself apart from Ripperologists concluding Sickert wrote virtually all the letters. Most experts believe only a handful were written by the killer.)

Remember, with respect to Ripper DNA and mtDNA evidence, the potential for degradation, 1888 forward: the paper itself, London weather, re-handling of the letters by too many people, repeated sealing, unsealing, continual packing, unpacking of the evidence. Can DNA stand up to these insults over the years?

Here mtDNA is close, but no cigar. In fact, ". . . the maternal inheritance pattern of mtDNA might also be considered problematic. Because all individuals in a maternal lineage share the same mtDNA sequence, mtDNA cannot be considered a unique identifier . . . apparently unrelated individuals might share an unknown maternal relative at some distant point in the past."

With an mtDNA match, one can only conclude that Sickert -- along with one percent of the London population, 1888, some 40,000 people -- can not be eliminated from consideration as mailing the letter. If you prove conclusively that Sickert handled a letter, via mtDNA or what remains of fingerprints, that doesn't make him a serial killer. Would Sickert, the prankster, send a hoax letter to The Yard?

Much is made of A. Pirie & Sons' watermarks on some of the correspondence. Two are highlighted by Cornwell -- the Ripper's letter to Dr. Openshaw, and a letter from Sickert to Whistler. Remarkable until it's discovered that Pirie stationery blanketed London, 1888.

Mary Kelly's body was discovered November 9, 1888. Cornwell pins the Kelly murder on Sickert, but Peter Corris writes in the Sydney Morning Herald last year, " . . . he (Sickert) was having dinner with Oscar Wilde in the Cadogan Hotel" the night of the slaying.

Is Colin Wilson right? The Ripper swallowed whole by the London fog?

Hung jury.

Rating:
Summary: Big Disappointment
Review: I am a Cornwell/Scarpetta fan, and find all of her fiction well written, intriguing, and fun to read. However, this book is so poorly written and so completely unorganized that it takes away from the incredible research and the exclusive story. The editor within me wanted to take this material and organize, re-write and give it some continuity and congruence. Overall, the book is a unique and an execeptionally well researched answer to the Jack the Ripper mystery, but the reader has to yank and pull to get the story and the facts out of the book.

Rating:
Summary: BEYOND A SHADOW OF A DOUBT
Review: Despite the "2-Star Spotlight reviews", I believe that Patricia Cornwell's latest book, "Portrait of a Killer-Jack the Ripper Case Closed" is an exceptional piece of criminal and journalistic investigation. Ms. Cornwell appears to have utilized as many tools possible in order to prove her point that Walter Sickert was in fact, "Jack the Ripper." As in any investigation, there are of course, innuendo's, speculations, coincidence, and circumstantial evidence. However, I feel that Ms. Cornwell's investigation and insight finally leads the reader beyond that "gnawing shadow of a doubt." Without further forensic proof, or a confession from Sickert's ghost, the 100% proff positive that everyone is expecting... simply won't occur. This case, like the "Black Dahlia," will always remain controversial. However, if Patricia Cornwell were the District Attorney presenting her book as the final argument to the Jury, then...I would find Walter Sickert, Guilty "beyond a shadow of a doubt."

Excellent work!! Thank you.