I sha'nt quit ripping them
Had fabulous dinner with Lovely Ex-Roommate last night. She is bracing herself to be invaded by teeming hordes of Australians for the holidays.
Had a dream last night that it was Christmas and somehow I'd left all my shopping undone, and I went to my old Borders and they were demolishing the bathrooms. But my subconscious is pretty smart because it gave me some actually pretty good ideas for holiday gifts.
I started reading this super fun book last night. As y'all may know I'm a big true crime buff and my first fascination as a teenager was with Jack the Ripper. I've read all the books, I've studied all the photos and the websites and blah blah blah. Yesterday I visited one of the Ripper sites I visit from time to time and saw that they had an ad up for a book co-written by a mystery author and a Ripperologist, titled, unsurprisingly, "The Ripperologists." It's about a series of murders that are precisely styled after Jack's murders, down to the names of the victims, and the detective brings in two Ripperologists, one the acknowledged expert who wrote the definitive reference guide (and who is clearly based on Donald Rumbelow, author of "The Complete Jack the Ripper") and the other a newbie, a mystery author who wrote a nonfiction book in which she claimed to have solved the case, determining that the Ripper had been Robert Louis Stevenson. This is a blatant and amusing dig at Patricia Cornwell's ridiculous book where she claimed to have proven that artist Walter Sickert was the Ripper.
I'm about a quarter of the way through it and it's super fun. These guys did their homework. Their attention to Ripper detail and the controversies surrounding it is exquisite. And I was amused to hear a character criticize the mystery author's conclusions with the same criticisms I directed at Cornwell's book. I felt vindicated.
Necklace of the Day!
Had a dream last night that it was Christmas and somehow I'd left all my shopping undone, and I went to my old Borders and they were demolishing the bathrooms. But my subconscious is pretty smart because it gave me some actually pretty good ideas for holiday gifts.
I started reading this super fun book last night. As y'all may know I'm a big true crime buff and my first fascination as a teenager was with Jack the Ripper. I've read all the books, I've studied all the photos and the websites and blah blah blah. Yesterday I visited one of the Ripper sites I visit from time to time and saw that they had an ad up for a book co-written by a mystery author and a Ripperologist, titled, unsurprisingly, "The Ripperologists." It's about a series of murders that are precisely styled after Jack's murders, down to the names of the victims, and the detective brings in two Ripperologists, one the acknowledged expert who wrote the definitive reference guide (and who is clearly based on Donald Rumbelow, author of "The Complete Jack the Ripper") and the other a newbie, a mystery author who wrote a nonfiction book in which she claimed to have solved the case, determining that the Ripper had been Robert Louis Stevenson. This is a blatant and amusing dig at Patricia Cornwell's ridiculous book where she claimed to have proven that artist Walter Sickert was the Ripper.
I'm about a quarter of the way through it and it's super fun. These guys did their homework. Their attention to Ripper detail and the controversies surrounding it is exquisite. And I was amused to hear a character criticize the mystery author's conclusions with the same criticisms I directed at Cornwell's book. I felt vindicated.
Necklace of the Day!