Patricia Cornwell, Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper - Case Closed Review

Overall Rating

Despite a huge amount of research the book is appalling in it's relentless suppositions and biased evidence.

Crucial to the book's argument is (failed) DNA evidence based on the Ripper letters. Almost all recent writers agree that all, or almost all of the letters are fakes. There were even prosecutions of fake 'Ripper' writers at the time. Thus even if the microchondial DNA evidence was correct (and there no proof that it is) then it could (but still doesn't) just (perhaps) prove that he wrote a fake letter. Sickert was clearly interested in the murders and was an odd character. There are many obsessed, utterly unconvincing Ripper writers. Cornwell is the worst I've read. If the amounts she spent on researching the book are true it would have been much better if she had spent all that money on helping 'unfortunates' in contemporary London.