Chasing the Ripper

Why a Booktrail?

1888: The short version of the Patricia Cornwell novel about Walter Sickert

ISBN: B00PKOPENE
Genre: Crime, Inspired by true events, Short Stories

What you need to know before your trail

In 2001, #1 New York Times bestselling crime novelist Patricia Cornwell was pulled into a real-life investigation of her own—the long-unsolved and deeply unsettling “Jack the Ripper” murders that mesmerized London in the late 1800s. Applying modern science and forensic techniques to a century-old crime, Cornwell’s research led to the publication of Portrait of a Killer, in which she identified the renowned British painter Walter Sickert as the Ripper. The book became a #1 bestseller but also embroiled Cornwell in controversy as Ripperologists dismissed her claims and her credibility. But for Cornwell, the book was only the beginning. For more than a decade, Cornwell has devoted countless hours and invested millions in her pursuit of new evidence against Sickert. Now, twelve years later, Cornwell revisits the most notorious unsolved crime in history—determined to solve the mystery once and for all.

Locations

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Travel Guide

Travel BookTrail style to Whitechapel, London

London at the time Jack the Ripper carried out his reign of terror, was a city of promiscuity, moral decline, prostitution, unemployment, poverty, police inefficiency… all these things combined to create a feeling of uncertainty and fear.

The East End of London became the focus of that fear. Whitechapel was known for its uneducated, poverty-ridden and morally destitute masses. Jack the Ripper walked onto the streets of the East End and put into stark contrast everything that was wrong about society as a whole.

The locations of the actual crimes are hidden or faded into the past now, but most of the locations can be visited on official Jack the Ripper tours and of course with this book!

Sickert

Sickert took a keen interest in the crimes of Jack the Ripper and believed he had lodged in a room used by the notorious serial killer. ( A landlady has told him that she had suspected a previous lodger). Sickert did a painting of the room and titled it Jack the Ripper’s Bedroom . This painting can be seen at the Manchester Art Gallery.