Rating: 
Summary: Case Closed? Yes, if you have expenses to recoup
Review: If you want to get a flavor of what this book and its author are all about without having to purchase a copy, I encourage you to check your local television listings for the one-hour program (carried in our area by The Learning Channel) that chronicles the investigation by Ms Cornwell that is the basis of the book. (Unfortunately, I saw the program after buying the book.) I found the program, which appears to have been scripted by Ms Cornwell, to be an exercise in pretentiousness and self-promotion, revealing in the author an ego the size of Texas. Some of the program was simplistic: a forensic pathologist proclaiming that the wounds to a Ripper victim were more than what was necessary to kill and thus were meant to degrade the victim; a profiler ticking off obvious possible characteristics of such a killer. Some was pretentious: the author stating she felt an obligation to find justice for the Ripper's victims; the author driving up to her private jet in a high-dollar sports car. And some was risible: in one scene, Ms Cornwell's hired experts walk toward the camera shoulder-to-shoulder like gunslingers come to clean up a corrupt town - all that was missing was Elmer Bernstein's score to The Magnificent Seven. I laughed out loud. Much of this could have been forgiven had Ms Cornwell delivered on her claim to have solved the Ripper case, but she has not. What the author has done is to make a circumstantial case for Walter Sickert being the Ripper. The evidence, though circumstantial, moves the author to claim she is "100% certain" that Sickert is the Ripper. While Ms Cornwell's many fans may line up behind this conclusion, objective readers, and those who do not have six million in expenses to recoup, are more likely to conclude simply that Sickert merits inclusion in the cast of suspects.
Rating: 
Summary: Case Not So Muc h Closed
Review: While this book had quite a lot of interesting facts and ideas it did not, for me at least, present an iron clad case against Walter Sickert. He probably was more than a little weird, and as Ms. Cornwell suggests, his paintings may show a perverted obsession with women. His art was quite dark in nature, but I did not always agree with Ms. Cornwell that it presented murder scenes. It's too bad he was an impressionist, maybe we could see more clearly what his artwork did represent. I thought that Ms. Cornwell's writing was very sporadic, she jumped around quite a lot. If she really wanted to convince the world that Walter Sickert was Jack the Ripper, then her book did her theory a great disservice. Perhaps if she had presented the facts that she says she has in a more direct way, it would be more convincing. I came away feeling that she should review her facts and do a rewrite. In spite of all this I did find the book interesting and enjoyed reading it. It gave me more information on the Ripper murders that I previously had known.
Rating:
Summary: An Interesting Read, but not a Definitive ID
Review: Walter Sickert was an interesting painter and case study, but despite the estimated $6 million author Patricia Cornwell reportedly spent investigating the Jack the Ripper mystery, no smoking gun is revealed in these pages. Cornwell, an author with previous crime lab experience who has gained fame and fortune with best selling novels about the exploits of forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta, provides potential DNA evidence to be used against Sickert to link him to the grisly Jack the Ripper murders, but as critics have noted, it is far from conclusive. Two important factors need to be remembered, 1) scores of letters purporting to have come from Jack the Ripper were received and reviewed by police, with most dismissed as coming from cranks; 2) Sickert was cremated, rendering the prospect of any conclusive DNA finding linking him to the killings virtually inconceivable. The book has merit, however, on several fronts, just as long as one is circumspect about drawing too much on sometimes fragmentary conclusions concerning Sickert. Victorian England is revealed in fascinating detail, along with the shadowy world of London's East End, Whitechapel, where the Jack the Ripper murders occurred. Sickert is a fascinating figure, with his bizarre artistic genius and ability to hobnob with leading figures of late nineteenth century London. He was the apprentice of the legendary Boston expatriate who took London society by storm and remained to prosper, artist, journalist and bon vivant James McNeill Whistler. While Sickert's artistic tastes revealed ghoulishness, the desire to paint luckless prostitutes with their hapless customers, it is understandable that he might draw attention as a potential Ripper possibility. He also was known to take walks in the dangerous Whitechapel area in late evenings. These are attention drawing elements, and perhaps render one a suspect, but it takes much more to pin the crimes on Sickert and establish that he indeed was the Ripper. Due to the fact that so much time has elapsed since the murders were committed over a century ago, it is understandable that interest abounds with a number of prospects being considered. It is also understandable, and indeed likely, that after all the time that has elapsed that speculation will continue to abound without the Jack the Ripper mystery ever being solved.
Rating: 
Summary: Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper-- Case Closed by Patri
Review: I recently read this book and found it extremely believable. I believe Ms. Cornwell has discovered who Jack the Ripper really was and she did a great job.
I have been interested in Jack the Ripper since my twenties and I really feel this case can be closed once and for all. I think most people will feel this is not a factual book, but that's because they want to keep the "mystery" of these hideous crimes going. I LOVE mysteries, but I also love to solve them and in my mind Ms. Cornwell did just that. Read this book and judge for yourself. She made a believer out of me.
Rating: 
Summary: This Case Is Still Open
Review: Cornwell seems not to have read the large body of research done on Jack the Ripper. She proposes a case which hinges on the idea that many, maybe most, of the several hundred "Ripper" letters that were sent to the authorities were written by the real Ripper who was, in fact, Walter Sickert. She asserts that an artist could easily diguise his handwriting but offers no expert corroboration or proof. The touted DNA evidence is equally suspect. This is a disappointing book for anyone who has read anything about Jack the Ripper.
Rating:
Summary: Guaranteed to put clouds in your sunshine.
Review: Seems to me Ms. Cornwell is getting tired. Of course, she's earned it. I wish I could write even one book the caliber of her earlier ones. For more than a decade, I've looked forward to her new book every year, but I didn't bother to finish this one and returned it the day I bought it. Beginning with The Last Precinct, which was really over the top with 'unnecesary roughness' (please, Patricia, no more old dogs at the bottom of swimming pools with bricks tied to their feet), it seems that either Ms. Cornwell personally or Kay Scarpetta has gone from melancholy to clinically depressed, and I hope whichever one of them it is feels better soon. I miss the smart, sensitive (to be sure) but 'together' Scarpetta, and Lucy as an FBI agent (and Benton Wesley ...I wish he'd come back from the dead a'la Bobby Ewing on Dallas). One other point re: the Ripper > Into the lives of his unwashed, diseased, and semi-toothless victims and the seaminess of London's east end is not a place I care to go so explicitly (and it isn't the gore; it's the smell). Frankly, I found myself thinking 'who cares if they're dead?' Come to think of it, who cares about Jack the Ripper? I thought I did, but, nah.
Rating: 
Summary: Persuasive, but needs editing
Review: I thought the text of the book needed some editing; the evidence was not laid out as clearly as it should have been and sources were not always explained well. I also thought that given the notoriety and history of this case, the size of the book and Cornwell's own expense, the book underutilized illustrations. I wanted to see more of Sickert's paintings and more of the Ripper letters. If this is the definitive book on Ripper, the last word, then no expense should have been spared in convincing the audience and displaying all the evidence. Nonetheless, I found her argument persuasive.
Rating:
Summary: I have no respect for Particia Cornwell
Review: Firstly the case is not closed, she merely provides a hole filled theory. I lost all respect for her when she was interviewed regarding people refuting her claims. She repiled that people did not aggree with her because "I am a woman and an American". Grow up, how embarrasingly sad. Just write, don't talk.
Rating:
Summary: Portrait of a Killer
Review: Not only was this a well researched and written book,I belive it to be the most convicing book on who Jack the Ripper was.I spent most of my life in Law Enforcement. In an Crimnal Investigator capacity. I have read almost all of the books on this Subject. The evidence is really quite convencing, for this old of a crime.I belive that the author,has her man. When there is this much evidence,you just cannot walk away with a reasonable doubt. At any rate, a person who have to read almost all the books on the Ripper's case. To see what I mean.Mrs. Cornwell done a supreme job! I too would take it into court. I belive a Judge would convict. I never try to guess a Jury.
Rating:
Summary: Cornwell's Most Intriguing Ever
Review: I was never really interested in the Jack-the-Ripper movies and I didn't expect much interest from my favorite writer. However, she has captured my interest with this new book. It is very interesting in the way it is put together with the pieces of science breaking through a hundred years of silence. How strange the layperson can put together her imaginings of his crimes? It is amazing how much one can understand when put in other ways. She seems to have done her research and so have the others that she contacted for help in these killings. How very interesting human behavior can be?
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