This is
my first post for Brit Writers and I've no doubt those
of you who know me will be relieved to hear that I’m not going to be banging on
about the parlous state of publishing and the uncertainties for the future of
the industry of which I am a very small part. You might be less relieved to
learn that I’m going to spend my time telling you about my latest book.
The
Ripper Secret is my second book for Simon & Schuster and is, like
the previous novel The Titanic Secret, set around a series of
real-world events, in this case the brutal killings perpetrated in the
Whitechapel area of London at the end of the nineteenth century by an unknown
murderer who acquired the hideously appropriate nickname ‘Jack the Ripper’.
What I’ve always found interesting about this particular serial killer – he
almost certainly wasn’t the first man who met this definition by embarking on a
killing spree over a period of time, but he’s definitely the most famous – is
that even today, almost a century and a half after the events which cast a
cloak of terror over the East End of London, his actions still throw a shadow
over the city.
People still travel to Whitechapel and the surrounding areas, looking for the
streets where the Ripper walked in search of his victims, and organized tours
of the murder sites – or rather what remain of the geographical locations
because development in this part of London has hidden almost all of the sites
under new roads and buildings – are still a popular tourist attraction.
And not
only that, but almost every year a new non-fiction book is published which
positively identifies yet another new subject as Jack the Ripper. The one
characteristic most of these books seem to share is that the author has a very
clear idea of exactly who the Ripper was, and then spends almost the entire book
cherry-picking those pieces of evidence which support this contention, ignoring
those which flatly contradict it and, in some cases, invent ‘facts’ from
dubious sources to reinforce his or her argument. Very few books even attempt
to carry out a proper and unbiased investigation of the Ripper killings and
then come to a reasonable conclusion about the identity of the perpetrator.
Perhaps
unsurprisingly, my novel does neither, precisely because it is a
novel. I am not attempting in this book to provide compelling evidence that my
chosen subject was Jack the Ripper, although suggestions have
been made in the past that he could have been. Nor am I trying to be selective
in choosing which facts will be a part the story. Instead, I’ve tried to weave
a believable plot around the Ripper killings, while sticking as rigidly as
possible to the historical reality of that dark time in east London.
While I
was researching the historical background of this book, a number of questions
occurred to me, questions which very few people writing on the subject have
ever attempted to answer. Most books have attempted simply to identify the
murderer and little else.
In
particular, few people ever seemed to have considered the following:
· Why did
the killings start?
· Why did
the mutilations get progressively more brutal with each succeeding murder?
· Why did
the killings stop?
· And
what possible motive was driving the murderer?
I don’t
pretend that my novel actually identifies the real Jack the Ripper, but what it
does do is provide logical and believable answers to those questions.
As to
the actual identity of this most notorious of all serial killers, I’ll leave
you to make up your own mind about that.
The
Ripper Secret will be published by Simon & Schuster in the United
Kingdom on 11 October 2012.
You can
contact me at:
Twitter:
@pss_author
Facebook:
Peter Stuart Smith
Blogs: The
Curzon Group
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