I, Ripper: A Novel, by Stephen Hunter
When somebody must go to the book establishments, search shop by establishment, shelf by shelf, it is quite frustrating. This is why we give the book collections in this website. It will certainly reduce you to search guide I, Ripper: A Novel, By Stephen Hunter as you such as. By looking the title, publisher, or authors of guide you want, you could discover them promptly. In your home, office, or perhaps in your method can be all ideal area within internet connections. If you intend to download the I, Ripper: A Novel, By Stephen Hunter, it is extremely easy then, since now we extend the link to buy and make bargains to download I, Ripper: A Novel, By Stephen Hunter So very easy!
I, Ripper: A Novel, by Stephen Hunter
PDF Ebook I, Ripper: A Novel, by Stephen Hunter
“[A] dark, bloody triumph...convincingly mad, alternatively even-tempered, hallucinatory and cackling...the book’s characters are great, its race to capture the murder is beautifully tense, and it has one of the best twists I can remember in any recent historical thriller.” —The New York Times Book Review “Absolutely riveting....Authentic in tone, well researched, and darkly atmospheric of Victorian London, this historical thriller combines the quiet plausibility of the psychopath in Thomas Harris’ Red Dragon (1981) with the menacing tone of Kenneth Cameron’s The Frightened Man (2009).” —Booklist The electrifying new thriller from New York Times bestseller Stephen Hunter takes you deep inside the mind of the most notorious serial killer of all time: Jack the Ripper.In the fall of 1888, Jack the Ripper slaughtered five prostitutes in London’s seamy Whitechapel District. He did not just kill—he ripped with a butcher’s glee—and then, after the particularly gruesome slaying of Mary Jane Kelly, he disappeared. For 127 years, Jack has haunted the dark corners of our imagination, the paradigm of the psychotic killer. We remember him not only for his crimes, but because, despite one of the biggest dragnets in London history, he was never caught. I, Ripper is a vivid reimagining of Jack’s personal story entwined with that of an Irish journalist who covered the case, knew the principals, charted the investigation, and at last, stymied, went off in a bold new direction. These two men stalk each other through a city twisted in fear of the madman’s blade, a cat-and-mouse game that brings to life the sounds and smells of the fleshpot tenderloin of Whitechapel and all the lurid acts that fueled the Ripper headlines. Dripping with intrigue, atmosphere, and diabolical twists, this is a magnificent psychological thriller from perennial New York Times bestseller Stephen Hunter, who the San Francisco Examiner calls “one of the best storytellers of his generation.”
I, Ripper: A Novel, by Stephen Hunter- Amazon Sales Rank: #346922 in Books
- Published on: 2015-05-19
- Released on: 2015-05-19
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.25" h x 1.30" w x 6.12" l, 1.15 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 320 pages
Review “[A] dark, bloody triumph . . . convincingly mad, alternatively even-tempered, hallucinatory and cackling . . . the book’s characters are great, its race to capture the murder is beautifully tense, and it has one of the best twists I can remember in any recent historical thriller.”—The New York Times Book Review“Add Sherlock Holmes, deductive reasoning, a classic frame-up, spot-on Cockney dialogue, erudite social observations, and pervasive anti-Semitism, and Bob's your uncle. Hunter solves the crime, and the Prince of Wales wasn't the culprit.”—Kirkus Reviews“Intriguing… details such as the ingenious speculations about the graffiti message that the murderer left on the night he slaughtered two prostitutes are sure to fascinate Ripperologists.” —Publishers Weekly“Absolutely riveting. . . . Authentic in tone, well researched, and darkly atmospheric of Victorian London, this historical thriller combines the quiet plausibility of the psychopath in Thomas Harris’ Red Dragon (1981) with the menacing tone of Kenneth Cameron’s The Frightened Man (2009).”—Booklist
About the Author Stephen Hunter has written eighteen novels. The retired chief film critic for The Washington Post, where he won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism, he has also published two collections of film criticism and a nonfiction work, American Gunfight. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. I, Ripper
CHAPTER ONE
The Diary
August 31, 1888 When I cut the woman’s throat, her eyes betrayed not pain, not fear, but utter confusion. Truly, no creature can understand its own obliteration. Our expectation of death is real but highly theoretical until the moment is upon us and so it was with her. She knew me but she didn’t know me. I was of a type, and having survived on the streets for years, she’d cultivated the gift of reading for threat or profit, deciding in a second and then acting accordingly. I knew in an instant I’d passed beyond the adjudication and represented, in her narrow rat brain of what once was a mind, the profit, not the threat. She watched me approach, along a dark street that had subtended from a larger thoroughfare, with a kind of expectant resignation. She had no reason to fear, not because violence was rare here in Whitechapel (it was not), but because it was almost always affiliated with robbery, as strong-armed gang members from the Bessarabians or the Hoxton High Rips struck a woman down, yanked her purse free, and dashed away. Crime, for the working population of the streets, meant a snatch-purse with a cosh, and he would be some kind of brute, a sailor most likely, or a large Jew, German, or Irish Paddy with a face like squashed potato. I had none of these defining characteristics but appeared to be some member of a higher order, to suggest service in a household or some low retail position. I even had a smile, so composed was I, and she returned that smile in the dimness of a crescent moon and a far-off gaslight. I know exactly what she expected; it was a transaction as ancient as the stones of Jerusalem, conducted not merely in quid but drachmas, kopeks, pesos, yen, francs, marks, gold pieces, silver pieces, even chunks of salt, pieces of meat, arrowheads. “Want a tup, guv’nor?” she’d say. “I do indeed, madam.” “It’s a thruppence for what’s below, a fourpenny for me mouth, darling. My, ain’t you a handsome bloke.” “Jenny in Angel Alley offers her lips for a thruppence flat,” I would dicker. “Then off to Jenny in Angel Alley and her fine lips, and don’t be bothering me.” “All right, we’ll rut front to back. A thruppence.” “In advance.” “Suppose you run?” “Ask ’em all, Sweetie don’t run. She does what she’s signed for, fair and square.” “So be it.” And with that the coin would be granted, a niche against the wall found, the position assumed, the skirts lifted, and I was expected to position myself suchways and angled so as to achieve fast entry. The system was not designed to accommodate finesse. Of foreplay, naught. The act itself would resolve into some sliding, some bucking, some in-out–in-out in the wet suction of the woman’s notch, and I’d have a small but reinvigorating event. I’d feel momentary bliss and step back. “Thank you kindly, sir,” she’d say, “and now Sweetie’s off.” That would be that—except not this night. If she had words to speak, she never spoke them, and that half-smile, in memory of a woman’s comeliness, died on her lips. With my left hand a blur, I clamped hard on her throat, seeing her pupils dilate like exploding suns—that to steady her for the next, which was contained in the strength and power of my stronger right hand. At full whip, I hit her hard with the belly of the blade, the speed, not any press or guidance on my own part, driving the keen edge perfectly and carrying it deep into her, sundering that which lay beneath, then curling around, following the flow of her neck. I hit my target, which Dr. Gray has labeled the inner carotid, shallowly approximated in the outer muscle of the neck, not even an inch deep. It was good Sheffield steel, full flat-ground to the butcher’s preference, my thumb hooked under and hard against the bolster for stability. There was no noise. She meant to step back and had more or less begun to sway in that direction when I hit her again, the same stroke driven by full muscle, with all the strength in my limb against it, and opened the second wound near perfect upon the first. Blood does not appear immediately. It seems as if it takes the body a few seconds to realize it has been slain and that it has obligations to the laws of death. She stepped back, and I gripped her shoulder as if we were to waltz, and eased her down, as if she’d just fainted or grown a bit dizzy from too much punch before the spin upon the floor among the lads and lasses. Meanwhile, the two streaks that marked my work reddened by degrees, but not much, until they each looked like a kind of unartful application of a cosmetic nature, some blur of powder or rouge or lipstick. Then a drip, then a drop, then a rivulet, each snaking slowly from the lip of the cut, leaving a track as it rushed down the tired old neck. Sweetie—or whatever, I didn’t know—was attempting to say something, but her larynx, though undamaged by the anatomical placement of my strikes, would not cooperate. Only low murmuring sounds came out, and her eyes locked all billiard-ball on infinity, though I do not believe she was yet medically dead, as she had not lost enough blood from her brain as yet. That issue resolved itself in the next second. The severed artery realized what its interruption required and at that point, at last, begin to spurt massively. Torrent to gush to tidal wave, the blood erupted from the full length of each cut and obeyed gravity in its search for earth in which to lose itself. I laid her down, careful not to let the surge flow upon my hands, even though, like all gentlemen, I wore gloves. In the moonlight—there was a quarter moon above, not much but perhaps just a bit—the liquid was dead black. It had no red at all to it and was quite warm and had a kind of brass-penny stench, metallic, as it rose to meet my nostrils. She lay supine, and her eyes finally rotated up into their sockets. If there was a moment of passing or an actual rattle, as the silly books claim, I missed it clean. She slid easily enough into a stillness so extreme it could not but be death.
Where to Download I, Ripper: A Novel, by Stephen Hunter
Most helpful customer reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful. Authentic, Bold and Fascinating By Richard B. Schwartz This is a fascinating book, not just because of its content, but because of its organization and narrative strategies. In London, in 1988, there were three anniversaries: that of the defeat of the Spanish Armada (1588), that of the Glorious Revolution (1688) and that of the Ripper murders (1888). The latter drew the most attention and excitement, by a wide margin. Ripperology is now heavy industry; Hunter includes an 8 pp. bibliography and claims, in his Acknowledgments, that he has identified the Ripper. “Watch for it. It’s going to be fun,” he writes.I, Ripper is fiction, not non-fiction, a reimagining of the manner in which the Ripper might have come to be, how and why he might have done what he did, how he was identified and the circumstances surrounding his disappearance. The answers are striking, nearly over-the-top, and—given the cultural history with which Hunter is dealing—very, very bold.No, he doesn’t identify Queen Victoria as the Ripper, but it’s practically that striking and he does so fairly and squarely, adhering to the unofficial rule that the reader must be given all of the evidence necessary to be able to understand and solve the mystery at the story’s center.I,Ripper has three narrators (more like 2.1). The Ripper himself has kept a diary, whose entries constitute half of the narrative. He is being pursued by an Irish journalist (nickname: Jeb) whose memoir constitutes the second half. There are also a few letters from a London prostitute, written to her mother. Their function in the story is unclear until the story’s end.While the voices vary they are all late 19thc voices and the novel is filled with references to contemporary culture and practices. Hunter tosses off the word ‘mudlarks’, e.g. These are people who sift through the detritus of the Thames when the tide is out. His command of these details is very impressive and the number of slips can be counted on one hand.The conclusion of the story is most impressive, as Hunter draws all of the individual threads into a single, blockbuster conclusion and subjects a villainous character to a fate that is not just appropriate but also anticipated, metaphorically and psychologically, throughout the novel.Stephen Hunter is one of my favorite novelists and it is a joy to see him move from the world of Bob Lee Swagger to that of Charles Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle.Highly recommended.
21 of 25 people found the following review helpful. A vintage-inspired novel that plays with our darkest fears of who and what may be lurking in the shadows watching. By Elspeth G. Perkin 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
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful. definitely “outside the box” By dch822 I, RIPPER was definitely “outside the box.” It’s unlike anything else I’ve ever read. I love the title and how “I, Ripper” is incorporated into the story. Stephen Hunter is a brilliant writer and I also love how he told this tale in late nineteenth century British English.The story is told from alternating viewpoints – a journal kept by Jack the Ripper and a memoir written by a newspaper writer who covered the crimes. The writer, Jeb, admits he is not very heroic, but assures readers there is a hero later in the story.I wasn’t real keen on this book early on. The opening journal entries are graphic murders followed by graphic sexual encounters followed by graphic murders. At one point I wondered if the book was simply going to be a fictionalized recounting of everything gruesome … but then finally, Jeb begins to channel his inner-Sherlock Holmes and work up a profile of who Jack the Ripper really is – and from that point forward I was unable to put the book down.There are some tense scenes as Hunter builds to a dramatic conclusion. There are some “twists” and a few predictable moments as well. Taken as a whole, this is an incredibly imaginative book that is sure to entertain horror/thriller/crime fiction fans: 4/5 stars.
See all 181 customer reviews... I, Ripper: A Novel, by Stephen HunterI, Ripper: A Novel, by Stephen Hunter PDF
I, Ripper: A Novel, by Stephen Hunter iBooks
I, Ripper: A Novel, by Stephen Hunter ePub
I, Ripper: A Novel, by Stephen Hunter rtf
I, Ripper: A Novel, by Stephen Hunter AZW
I, Ripper: A Novel, by Stephen Hunter Kindle
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar