I, Ripper: A Novel by Stephen Hunter

Final Rating: 2.8/5

A vintage-inspired novel that plays with our darkest fears of who and what may be lurking in the shadows watching.

   1888 London. While an evening journalist plays his fingers across his typewriter and an unfortunate soul of the lanes finds the bottom of another gin bottle, a monster hunts by gaslight and plays his fingers against the belly of a blade in his frock coat. What soon follows will be known as the autumn of the knife and become a part one of history’s most notorious mysteries.

   With a gruesome introduction I, Ripper grabs the reader by the throat and transports them to another place and time. This continues throughout the story as we follow three views that move from a vicious killer, to the thoughts and observations of a bombastic journalist and finally to the scattered confessions and hopes of a voice from Whitechapel. With each one of these switches, the story delves into the depths of the depraved and examines events from August to November 1888 and beyond in graphic detail. A fine flavor of dialogue of the period also follows the reader throughout and only adds to the experience of revisiting Victorian England in all her sordid grandeur. This is truly not a story for the sensitive reader, take this as a friendly warning but then again what kind of story would you expect that involved Jack the Ripper?

   Although told in a grand fashion that made it nearly impossible to look away from and forget, I am so sorry to say that I was disappointed by the end. At the beginning all I could think was “incredible presentation of historical details and vintage style storytelling” but by the middle something shifted and the story began to lose momentum and introduced a complex series of strange tangents that although completely unexpected -it just confused and disappointed me overall in the directions the intricate psychological makeup and explanations of the ultimate motive all went in this novel. The story also unfortunately seemed to weaken in terms of believability as a few chapters moved away from the historic crimes and tried to stand apart but just slipped into an overkill of drama and animated mayhem; leaving more questions than answers by the final page. That all aside, I, Ripper was still very entertaining and the sharing of details about the setting and the journalism profession along with the thrilling cat-and-mouse games throughout this novel were all very nicely done but the ultimate motive, expansion of events outside the crimes and final reveal ended in a whimper. I would still recommend this novel to those who love an old fashioned story that although chilling and grisly in its details, it makes an intriguing reimagined chase across 1888 London that plays with our darkest fears of who and what may be lurking in the shadows watching.

* I would like to thank Simon & Schuster and Edelweiss for the opportunity to read and enjoy I, Ripper: A Novel 

Release Date: May 19, 2015