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Title: Person or Persons Unknown by Bruce Alexander ISBN: 0-425-16566-3 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: October, 1998 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (9 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Another Good Story
Comment: The fourth installment in Bruce Alexander's murder mystery series about blind 18th-century London magistrate Sir John Fielding is another step up. The plot is built around a Jack the Ripper-style murders of a series of prostitutes. Alexander appears to have read liberally from Patricia Cornwell to Patrick O'Brien, for his stories introduce elements of early forensic criminology and O'Brien's careful historical pictures of English life. The stories are good, they are not great. They are fun and easy reads.
Rating: 5
Summary: Bravo Mr.Alexander!!!!!
Comment: This is the 4th book in the Sir John series and upholds the outstanding writing and vivid details of daily life in England of the 1700's. I always look fwd to reading another episode in the adventures of Sir John Fielding and his young assistant Jeremy Proctor.The murder investigations they perform are well thought out and hold your interest. I can atribute many nights of reading until the early hours to this series. Keep them coming Mr.Alexander.
Rating: 5
Summary: The best one yet - a ripping yarn indeed!
Comment: I enjoyed this fourth novel in Bruce Alexander's Sir John Fielding series a little more than any of the first three for one principal reason. The book appears to be good enough to stand on its own because there are apparently a large number of people who enjoyed it (and maybe some who DIDN'T enjoy it) without understanding what the author did.
But the reason why I enjoyed this book most of all is because I have an interest in the subject matter that this novel REALLY concerns. Because what Alexander did was to take a famous series of serial killings of prostitutes that actually took place in late 19th century London and transpose them into the year 1770, the year in which this novel takes place.
Can it be that so many readers failed to recognize that the details of the killings in this novel match so perfectly with the details of the murders that actually took place in Whitechapel in 1888? Just to make the contract a little more binding, the author also gives us a suspect nicknamed "Jack-the-carver".
"He'll carve you up, see?" Jimmie Bunkins says to his chum, the narrator and main character, Jeremy Proctor, explaining the nickname. "Is he what you would call a 'high ripper'?" Jeremy asks in reply, using the term that was then used to describe a knife-wielding criminal.
The usual cast of characters that Alexander's readers have grown fond of are here: the indomitable Sir John Fielding, his young assistant, Jeremy, Jimmie Bunkins, the reformed former sneak thief and street urchin, and Black Jack Bilbo, Bunkins's guardian and Jeremy's avuncular mentor. And I am happy to report the return of Ignatius Donnelly, the kindly Irish doctor who played a significant role in "Blind Justice", the first novel in the series before departing for Lancashire in fruitless pursuit of the lovely widow, Lady Goodhope.
In addition to that, Jeremy (who seems to have no shortage of worthy adult male role models) is also befriended by Constable Perkins, one of Sir John's "Beak Runners", who has developed his one arm and his fighting skills to such an extent that he can lick any man with two arms. His imparting of some of those skills to Jeremy plays a significant role in this novel.
Jeremy's character development remains of interest to those who have read this series in order. We know of Jeremy's intent to study the law with Sir John, but here we see, for the first time, a "flash-forward" twenty-seven years into the future where Jeremy has actually become a practicing solicitor. Partly consistent and partly inconsistent with that, we also see Jeremy pitting his own judgment against that of Sir John during a criminal investigation for the first time in this series.
And in the third novel, Watery Grave, at the age of 14, Jeremy learns the "facts of life" from Black Jack Bilbo. "Persons Unknown" takes place after Jeremy turns 15 and is feeling the yearnings of puberty. His interest in a female street acrobat- turned-prostitute is an interesting sub-plot.
There are weaknesses in this novel that a less tolerant reviewer might not so readily excuse. Jeremy's treacly personality is less tolerable at a time when he is entering puberty. Surely, even a well-spoken 15 year old lad in the year 1770 had thoughts and instincts and language considerably more coarse than those displayed here by Jeremy.
The fight scene that takes place between Jeremy (after he has received instruction from Constable Perkins) and a street thug is ridiculously one-sided. And Sir John's original plan to trap the murderer is utterly ridiculous and provides more comic relief than the author must have intended.
This reviewer's affection for the characters and for the setting in which they perform and his delight at seeing the Whitechapel mystery moved 118 years back in time into a fictitious setting override his objections, and 5 stars are awarded.
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Title: Death of a Colonial by Bruce Alexander ISBN: 0425177025 Publisher: Prime Crime Pub. Date: 10 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $6.50 |
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Title: Murder in Grub Street by Bruce Alexander ISBN: 0425155501 Publisher: Berkley Pub Group Pub. Date: November, 1996 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: The Color of Death by Bruce Alexander ISBN: 0425182037 Publisher: Prime Crime Pub. Date: 10 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $6.50 |
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Title: Smuggler's Moon by Bruce Alexander ISBN: 0425186903 Publisher: Prime Crime Pub. Date: October, 2002 List Price(USD): $6.50 |
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Title: Blind Justice by Bruce Alexander ISBN: 0425150070 Publisher: Berkley Pub Group Pub. Date: December, 1995 List Price(USD): $6.50 |
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