Edmund Reid

Ripper Fiction
with DAVID GREEN
There was Mary.
She didn’t look like much of a person at all, the way she was carved up. It was so awful, if I did any
kind of job telling you about it here, you might get so revolted you’d quit reading my book. Besides, I’d
feel guilty for putting such pictures into your head. My aim is to inform you and entertain you with the
tale of my adventures...
* * * * *
The Mammoth Book of Jack the Ripper Stories
Maxim Jakubowski (ed.)
Robinson (2015)
ISBN-978-1-4721-3584-1
Paperback 562pp
£9.99
from Savage by Richard Laymon (1993)
Editor Maxim Jakubowski has assembled a wonderful collection of 40 all new stories about Jack the
Ripper. Mostly they are tales of mystery, suspense, science fiction or horror, often with a counterfactual
twist thrown in for good measure. The East End territory will be largely familiar, but just around the
corner you’ll find yourself in strange, dark places - a bordello stocked with the living dead, a hi-tech
office suite equipped with Jack the Ripper simulators, and a twenty-first century hotel where a Jack
the Ripper conference quickly degenerates into bloody massacre… You’ll know many of the characters
who skulk in the rookeries and gas-lit courtyards, but from time to time you’ll also come across other folk - psychic detectives
and kitchen offal workers, seafaring lunatics and cross-dressing Metropolitan police officers in padded bustles and chignon wigs.
And of course, you’ll bump into Jack the Ripper in a multitude of shapes and forms.
At the crudest level, this is an anthology of serial killer stories. But Jakubowski’s selections are broad and wide-ranging, keen
to explore the myriad ways in which victims and assailants interact and respond to violence. This diversity is welcome, and it
serves to demonstrate how far Ripper fiction has matured from the stalk-and-slash yarns of old.
Naturally, the stories vary in style and quality, and readers will need to find for themselves the entries that work best for
them. Perhaps a couple of the stories have been too arduously crafted, while others seem to me to offer little beyond a ‘shock’
revelation about the Ripper’s identity.
Overwhelmingly, though, this is a very strong collection. What distinguishes the best stories is a willingness to take risks coupled
with a clear commitment to the Ripper theme in its purest form. Standouts include Adrian Ludens’s supernatural horror tale
‘The Monster’s Leather Apron’, which follows Jack the Ripper out into the Yukon goldfields for a savage encounter with an Innuit
monstrosity. Equally successful is Sally Spedding’s creepy and menacing look at Aaron Kosminski’s troubled schooldays in Congress
Poland. Catherine Lundoff contributes a tense domestic drama about patriarchal violence, focusing on the Ripper’s terrorizing
influence over the cowed female members of his household. In ‘A Small Band of Dedicated Men’ Andrew Lane shows what happens
when a group of men unfairly accused of being the Ripper - Ostrog, Tumblety, Seweryn Kłosowski, Francis Thompson, etc – join
forces to hunt down the real killer: it’s a fantastic story with absolutely the best nasty twist in the book. Interestingly, there is
tale called ‘They All Love Jack’ by Nick Sweet featuring Michael Maybrick as the Ripper.
This anthology is crammed with intelligent and consistently entertaining fiction that will appeal to even the most jaded souls.
It’s a fitting high point on which to end what has been an outstanding year for Ripper fiction.
Ripperologist 147 December 2015 69