A DEADLY DECEPTION

Has Jack the Ripper struck again in Whitechapel? A psychic and her uniquely well-informed friend are on the case.

London, July 17, 1889. Flower seller and sometime sleuth Constance Piper awakes from a deep sleep to hear the streets filled with the cry that Jack the Ripper has struck again. Constance’s first-person narrative alternates with that of Emily Tindall, Constance’s deceased mentor, who psychically guides her from beyond the grave. The victim is Old Alice Mackenzie, worker at Goulston Street Washhouse and a friend of Constance’s mother, Patience. While Constance questions the hardscrabble locals and weighs the likelihood of Jack the Ripper’s involvement, Emily takes the reader on a wider journey, tackling both the background of the case and the investigation of police detective Thaddeus Hawkins. Hawkins determines that the murder is a copycat killing, the work of someone “connected to the Fenian cause of Irish Home Rule.” Spotting the eerie figure of a woman in black at Alice’s funeral, Constance appeals to Emily to tell her whether this woman is real or a specter, bringing her closer to a solution. Constance and Hawkins have collaborated twice before (The Angel Makers, 2018, etc.), and their teaming up here adds traction to the investigation, which broadens to involve not only a Fenian bomb plot, but also the kidnapping of children for “nefarious purposes.”

One narrator’s earnest, character-driven thriller, rich in pathos, contrasts effectively with the other’s police procedural, studded with period detail.