Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark (September 7, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1402243553
Under Certain Circumstances, No One Is More Suited to Solving a Crime than a Woman Confined to Her Bed
An invalid for most her life, Alice James is quite used to people underestimating her. And she generally doesn’t mind. But this time she is not about to let things alone. Yes, her brother Henry may be a famous author, and her other brother William a rising star in the new field of psychology. But when they all find themselves quite unusually involved in the chase for a most vile new murderer—one who goes by the chilling name of Jack the Ripper—Alice is certain of two things:
No one could be more suited to gather evidence about the nature of the killer than her brothers. But if anyone is going to correctly examine the evidence and solve the case, it will have to be up to her.
Go to Sourcebooks here to read an excerpt of What Alice Knew: A Most Curious Tale of Henry James and Jack the Ripper
My thoughts:
Henry James, an American born author, brother William, philosopher and psychologist is a professor at Harvard and is asked to come to London to assist Scotland Yard in apprehending the person known as Jack the Ripper. Henry and his invalid sister, diarist Alice James, get themselves involved in trying to solve the case in the Whitechapel slums, an art school and an asylum for the criminally insane. With Henry and William traveling about London investigating clues and Alice at home figuring out the clues, they are fairly certain they know who the killer is. Their lives up till now have been involved in going to dinner parties with the likes of writer Oscar Wilde, the renowned painter John Singer Sargeant and George du Maurier, who was a renowned author and cartoonist. The story takes the brothers into the East End of London where the brutal and bloody murders of women have taken place. The three siblings end up involved in a seance, and Henry and William find themselves attending morgues and the slums in their search. Jack the Ripper has become one of the most unsolved criminal cases of the Victorian era . Their have been some very interesting thoughts as to who it could be. Experts thought that the person had to be a surgeon and it was even thought that the Ripper was a member of Queen Victoria's close family.. I imagine that we will never know but I found it interesting that the author chose the particular person that she did for the character of the killer. In this fictionalized version, the author portrayed the siblings sometimes not very likeable people themselves with each one of them having issues of their own. The ending was not what I expected at all. I did enjoy the book as I love these kind of stories. If you love a good murder mystery and character study, What Alice Knew fits into that genre easily.
About the Author:
You can go to Paula Marantz Cohen's website to learn about her and her works here
I received the book from Sourcebooks and was not monetarily compensated for my review.
After I read the book I did some research on some of the characters in the story of What Alice Knew.
Henry James, April 15, 1843(1843-04-15) – February 28, 1916) was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James.
James spent the last 40 years of his life in England, becoming a British subject in 1915, one year before his death. He is primarily known for the series of novels in which he portrays the encounter of Americans with Europe and Europeans. His method of writing from the point of view of a character within a tale allows him to explore issues related to consciousness and perception, and his style in later works has been compared to impressionist painting.
William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher who was trained as a medical doctor. He wrote influential books on the young science of psychology, educational psychology, psychology of religious experience and mysticism, and on the philosophy of pragmatism. He was the brother of novelist Henry James and of diarist Alice James.William James was born at the Astor House in New York City. He was the son of Henry James Sr., an independently wealthy and notoriously eccentric Swedenborgian theologian well acquainted with the literary and intellectual elites of his day. The intellectual brilliance of the James family milieu and the remarkable epistolary talents of several of its members have made them a subject of continuing interest to historians, biographers, and critics.
Alice James (August 7, 1848 – March 6, 1892) was a U.S. diarist. The only daughter of Henry James, Sr. and sister of philosopher William James and novelist Henry James, she is known mainly for the posthumously published diary that she had kept in her final years. Other characters in the story.
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish writer, poet, and prominent aesthete. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890. Today he is remembered for his many epigrams, his plays which are still revived, and the tragedy of his imprisonment and early death.
John Singer Sargent (January 12, 1856 – April 14, 1925) was an American painter, and a leading portrait painter of his era. During his career, he created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings. His oeuvre documents worldwide travel, from Venice to the Tyrol, Corfu, the Middle East, Montana, Maine, and Florida.
George Louis Palmella Busson du Maurier (6 March 1834 – 8 October 1896) was a French-born British cartoonist and author, known for his cartoons in Punch and his novel Trilby. He was the father of actor Gerald du Maurier and grandfather of the writers Angela du Maurier and Dame Daphne du Maurier. He was also the father of Sylvia Llewelyn Davies and thus grandfather of the five boys who inspired Peter Pan.
"Jack the Ripper"Jack the Ripper" is the best-known name given to an unidentified serial killer who was active in the largely impoverished areas in and around the Whitechapel district of London in 1888. The name originated in a letter, written by someone claiming to be the murderer, that was disseminated in the media. The letter is widely believed to have been a hoax, and may have been written by a journalist in a deliberate attempt to heighten interest in the story. Other nicknames used for the killer at the time were "The Whitechapel Murderer" and "Leather Apron".Attacks ascribed to the Ripper typically involved female prostitutes from the slums whose throats were cut prior to abdominal mutilations. The removal of internal organs from at least three of the victims led to proposals that their killer possessed anatomical or surgical knowledge. Rumours that the murders were connected intensified in September and October 1888, and letters from a writer or writers purporting to be the murderer were received by media outlets and Scotland Yard. The "From Hell" letter, received by George Lusk of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, included half of a preserved human kidney, supposedly from one of the victims. Mainly because of the extraordinarily brutal character of the murders, and because of media treatment of the events, the public came increasingly to believe in a single serial killer known as "Jack the Ripper".
Extensive newspaper coverage bestowed widespread and enduring international notoriety on the Ripper. An investigation into a series of brutal killings in Whitechapel up to 1891 was unable to connect all the killings conclusively to the murders of 1888, but the legend of Jack the Ripper solidified. As the murders were never solved, the legends surrounding them became a combination of genuine historical research, folklore, and pseudohistory. The term "ripperology" was coined to describe the study and analysis of the Ripper cases. There are now over one hundred theories about the Ripper's identity, and the murders have inspired multiple works of fiction."
The canonical five Ripper victims are Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly.
source: Sourcebooks and Wikipedia
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