People of Abandoned Character

To think I nearly gave up on this. It wasn't quite holding my fascination, but the premise promised so much that I continued on. And OMG! What a finish! About halfway through things start to move - think gothic fiction along the lines of "Gaslight" and "Rebecca" and you'll know what you are in for.

Just as Alice was led down the the rabbit hole by the White Rabbit, so Whitfield leads the reader through the crime-ridden sordid streets of Victorian Whitechapel, an area of overcrowding and abject poverty. It was a city of doss houses, sweatshops, abattoirs, overcrowded slums, pubs, a few shops and warehouses. It was a place were the wealthy gentlemen "slummed it" and the well-heeled ladies got their daily crime fix by visiting the scenes of show more the Ripper's horror.

When Nurse Susannah Chapman marries wealth doctor Thomas Lancaster, little did he know what she was getting in for - yes, marry in haste, repent in leisure is very apt. Thomas becomes a Jekyll and Hyde type character, and when the Ripper murders start, Susannah slowly connects the dots, coming to a horrifying conclusion that could end in her own death.

For a first novel, this is gripping stuff - as I said, I nearly gave up on it early on in the piece, but the scene was just being set with a bit of retrospective narrative - it will make sense as you near then end. And I especially loved the narrative ascribed to the Ripper's victims. The ending .... you know its building up to something, however, the something that we get is far for expected! It is almost noirish by definition.

This and Elizabeth Hill's "Killing The Girl" have to be two of my favourite crime reads for this year. show less

WOW. Just wow. After ploughing through a slew of three star books, a random recommendation on Instagram completely captivated my imagination!

Clare Whitfield's Victorian gothic mystery, based on the murders of Jack the Ripper and with shades of classic 'sensation novels' like The Woman in White, is the story of Susannah Chapman, a nurse who marries a wealthy doctor to escape the poverty and drudgery she was born to. Dr Thomas Lancaster is handsome and charming, and Susannah can't understand why he is interested in her, a plain, thirty year old spinster with a shameful background, but agrees to marry him anyway. When the confidence and authority of her husband's upper middle class position turns to vicious cruelty and abuse soon after show more she moves in to his Chelsea house, with his Danvers-esque housekeeper Mrs WIggs, Susannah fears that she has escaped the frying pan by jumping into the fire - but what is the dark secret Thomas is keeping from his new wife?

The premise of the story is that Susannah believes that Thomas is Jack the Ripper, committing the horrific murders of 'women of abandoned character' in Whitechapel, where Susannah herself was born, but I actually found Susannah's own situation, and that of all Victorian women, to be far more disturbing. She marries Thomas out of vanity and ambition, but when she realises that he is not who she thought he was, she is trapped - her husband 'owns' her, legally and financially, and nobody would take her word over his if she spoke out, which she does try. There is also the very Victorian suggestion that Susannah is merely being 'hysterical' and imagining everything that happens to her at home - is she an unreliable narrator after all? The author had me doubting Susannah and her laudanum-fuelled 'hallucinations' at one point, skilfully unravelling the 'truth' about the characters at a constantly tense pace.

Despite not fully being able to trust Susannah, I did sympathise with her and wanted her triumph over her slimy husband and his haughty housekeeper. And despite the historical setting of the story, she is a very resourceful woman. Whereas the revelations about Thomas and Mrs Wiggs didn't surprise me, I was shocked by a secret from Susannah's past - but by that point, I was strangely willing to accept that Thomas wasn't the only one with two sides to his character!

I just can't recommend this book enough - the pages will fly, and there is also a lot of interesting historical fact about the women murdered by Jack the Ripper, brought to life far more vividly in this fictional account than Hallie Rubenhold managed in The Five. The memory of the Ripper's last victim, Mary Jane Kelly, is perhaps betrayed for dramatic effect, but I think she met a far worse fate in real life. show less

What an enraging book this is! I mean, it is the perfect theory as to who was Jack the Ripper, but lovelies, I could not have been angrier about the situation Sussanah put herself in, and REMAINED IN!! Just wanted to jump inside the pages, slap some sense into her, and then let her get on.
Anyway, this is the story about Susannah, a nurse at the London hospital. Introverted and with very little self esteem, she manages to snatch up one of the most coveted bachelor surgeons in the city.
Susannah and Thomas get married and honeymoon is bliss! Oh, but when they return home, a darker, violent side of Thomas emerges, making Susannah question everything, up to the point that she starts to suspect Thomas might be the new serial killer roaming show more the city called Jack the Ripper.
Who is he? Where does he go at night? Why does he return covered in blood? Who can help her, and will she end up suffering the same fate as all the murdered women?
Damn good this book is! show less