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

Overall this book is awsome, it might make you go to sleep at times if you have no idea what she is trying to explain. It's best to read this book when you are wide awake and your focus isn't shared. This way you will be able to apreciate the entire work that was done for this book to be made.

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.

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Patricia Cornwell certainly has done some home work into the Jack The Ripper case, and this is shown throughout the whole of the Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper - Case Closed book. She studied hard, and she explains in full why she believes Sickert is Jack The Ripper.

Patricia Cornwell - Portrait of a killer - Jack The Ripper - case closed - is a great read with lots of twists, turns, stories and evidence. She really studied hard to write this book, as you notice the whole way through the book, and she believes that Jack The Ripper is Sickert. She also gives a some strong evidence that proves he could well have been.

Patricia Cornwell, Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper - Case Closed - This book left me exasperated and more frustrated at the author than convinced of the guilt of Walter Sickert. Patricia Cornwell, obviously a respected author in her own right, is on an unsubstantiated witch hunt to prove that Walter Sickert, the acclaimed artist, was indeed Jack the Ripper. Case Closed? Definitely not, indeed, Cornwell has broken all of the most basic rules of research. In her drive to prove the guilt of Sickert, she has ignored the fact that research findings need to be based upon facts, that there must be documented evidence and that the researcher must keep from trying to manipulate the facts to make them fit in with 'desired' findings. Understandably, it is difficult to gather evidence on such a dated and dis-organised case as the Ripper's, however, if one is to write a book entitled 'Case Closed' one must endeavour to prove some sort of point. I entered the novel with an open mind, honestly believing that Cornwell must have uncovered some strong evidence. I closed the book thinking that Cornwell must really 'hate' Walter Sickert to work so tenaciously to prove his guilt with such scant evidence. To say that the evidence is circumstantial is to be kind. At one point Cornwell attempts to tie Sickert with a message found in a bottle on the English coast, based upon the evidence that he painted a nearby village once and frequently caught the nearby ferry to France. This book actually becomes a parody of itself. Upon beginning the book I entertained the fact that Sickert might have been the Ripper, however, when I closed the book, I felt only sorry for him. I felt sorry that Cornwell was preying on the memory of a talented, if eccentric artist whose only crime seemed to be that he was not Cornwell's favourite type of person. I cannot imagine where Cornwell got the idea that Sickert was the Ripper to begin with, but she definitely obliterated any attempt to prove his guilt in this novel. To be eccentric and odd is not to be a murderer. Cornwell delivers a blistering attack on Sickert and becomes so tied up in her own self-belief that she begins to write of Sickert as though she had proved beyond reasonable doubt that he was the Ripper. Cornwall is cruel and unjustified in using Sickert's name based on such a weak network of evidence. She does not convincingly prove that Sickert was the Ripper, she does, however, use his name directly in relation to the murders. Sickert would be hiding in the shadows - not the Ripper. Cornwell speculates to the point of the absurd and the book turns out to be more of a joke than an intellectual investigation. To manipulate every shred of evidence by surmising that Sickert was wearing various costumes, pretending to be in different countries, drawing on and wiping off beards, donning wigs, teaching himself how to write in different hands, without the slightest shred of evidence except that he spent some time as an actor, is to take artistic and imaginative licence to its extreme. How would it appear in a court today, if a lawyer claimed that the defendant had donned a wig, painted on a beard, lost four inches in height and then disappeared down a sewer covering to make his escape? Any modern Lawyer would make a mockery out of Cornwell's case and a martyr out of Sickert. Perhaps Sickert was the Ripper, but in this study Cornwell has done more damage to the case than anything else. It is worth reading for its utter ridiculous exercise in extreme speculation and frantic, vain attempts to incriminate on the flimsiest of evidence. However, if you are looking for reading satisfaction and a sense of conclusion, put the book back on the shelf. Case closed? A far sight from it. Stephen Johnstone