Portrait Of A Killer: Jack The Ripper - Case Closed Quotes
"Plots within plots, fraught atmosphere, and unrelenting suspense keep readers on tenterhooks."
"Brainteasing... one of the most savage killers of her career."
"The author's darkest and perhaps best... a fast-paced, first-rate thriller."
"Cornwell lights a fire under familiar characters—sparks her hottest adventure in years."
"Relentlessly intense... Stark and gripping... Scarpetta is back on her game and in peak form."
"Thrilling... Once again we see the ingenuity and bravery that have made [Scarpetta] so appealing."
"Gripping reading... So hard to put down your arms will tingle with intimations of rigor mortis before you reach the smashing climax."
"Describes cutting-edge forensic techniques in fascinating detail."
"A terrific read, perhaps the best entry in the Scarpetta series yet."
"Complex and convincing... fascinating and original."
"The Body Farm is Cornwell at her chilling best."
"A pluperfect page-turner that surpasses everything she has produced thus far."
"Cornwell brings an edgy authority, a gimlet eye for her city, and a taste for nonstop conflict to the police novel."
"He was the leader, and other children did what he demanded, even if Walter’s 'games' were unfair or unpleasant."
"I was made (being appropriately thin and red-haired) to discard my dress & shoes & stockings, in order to brood over the witches cauldron."
"In the Victorian era and the early 1900s it was unheard of to tell all, especially about family."
"He was '... at once the most fickle and the most constant of creatures ... unreasonable, but always rationalizing.'"
"Sickert’s arrogance, his lack of feeling, and his extraordinary power of manipulation are typical of psychopaths."
"Psychopaths act without fear of consequences. They do not care about the suffering left in the aftermath of their violent storms."
"The Ripper’s only palpable fear is that he will be caught."
"From 1888 to the present day, the millions of people who have associated Jack the Ripper with mystery and murder undoubtedly have no clue that more than anything else, this infamous killer was a mocking, arrogant, spiteful, and sarcastic man."
"Walter Sickert was far too clever to paint pictures of homicides and entertain his friends by reenacting a real murder that had happened just beyond his door."
"The Metropolitan Police were established and headquartered at 4 Whitehall Place, its back door opening onto Scotland Yard."
"The police were not supposed to trap citizens."
"Artists rendered sensational, salacious depictions of the homicides."
"The brightness of the flame could be controlled by turning the chimney."
"It’s a wonder he didn’t set himself on fire."
"Magazines and penny tabloids showed constables shining intense beams into the darkest corners."
"Police patrolling the safer, less crime-ridden areas of the metropolis would have little or no need to light their lanterns."
"During the night shift a constable was expected to walk his beat in ten to fifteen minutes."
"Psychopaths love to watch the drama they script."
"Serial arsonists love to watch their fires burn."
"Drawing public attention to the deplorable conditions of the East End may be the only good deeds Jack the Ripper did."
"The language of silence is hard to read, but the dead do not lie."
"A suspect’s entire estate could end up in the crown’s coffers."
"The hue and cry when one stumbles upon a dead body."
"It was best not to die suddenly, if possible."
"The fear prevailed that one might be mistaken for dead and buried alive."
"If people in the twenty-first century have difficulty accepting that a psychopathic killer can be attractive, likeable, and intelligent."
"The notion of the "coroner," who is usually a nonmedical person elected and invested with the power to decide how someone died."
"For all his experience and gifts, Abberline did not solve the biggest crime of his life."
"The theories! We were lost almost in theories; there were so many of them."
"Homosexuality or child molesting—or both—are suggested as the reasons why Druitt was fired."
"He was a man who worked relentlessly and without applause, the quiet clockmaker who did not want attention."
"I am afraid that Montague or 'Monty' will always remain a bit shadowy."
"At his inquest, the jury returned a verdict of 'suicide whilst of unsound mind.'"
"The sun shone only five minutes that day, and it was misty and rainy."
"Better to let him talk about the improved sanitation in the East End."
"Walter Sickert was a murderer unlike any other."
"Violent psychopaths are voyeurs. They stalk, watch, fantasize, then rape or kill or both."
"It takes no time or skill to disembowel a person."
"Much has been made of the Ripper’s alleged surgical skills."
"This isn’t 'surgery'; it is expediency, or grab and cut."
"Because of the dismal state of forensic science and medicine in 1888, there were a number of misunderstandings about blood."
"The taking of them is so typical as to be expected in violent psychopathic crimes."
"Her relatives did not form a procession of coaches for fear of drawing attention to Annie’s last journey."
"The crimes were 'beyond the ghastliest efforts of fiction'—even worse than Edgar Allan Poe’s Murders in the Rue Morgue, and 'nothing in fact or fiction equals these outrages at once in their horrible nature and in the effect which they have produced upon the popular imagination.'"
"Sickert’s sketches are a glimpse into his psyche and how he lived his life."
"His hasty artistic strokes capture what he saw as he sat in a music hall, gazing up at the stage."
"Why any person has such a disregard for life that he or she enjoys destroying it is beyond comprehension."
"No one knew about the back-spatter pattern caused by the repeated swinging or stabbing motions of a weapon."
"Perhaps murder and mutilation were a powerful cathartic for his frustration and rage, and a way to destroy his desire."
"In 1888, no one working the Ripper cases was spending his time researching how far or how high blood arced when an upright person’s carotid artery was cut."
"Prostitutes weren’t likely to lie down on hard pavers or in mud or wet grass."
"Blood spatter experts routinely conduct experiments with blood to get a better idea of how it drips, flies, sprays, spurts, and spatters according to the laws of physics."
"Perhaps it should have been considered that if the Ripper did bring a stick of chalk with him when he set out that night, he had planned to write the bigoted message—or something like it—on the wall after he committed murder."
"Psychopathic murder is not a social disease."
"The streets of the East End were deserted at night, and scores of plainclothes detectives lurked in the shadows, waiting for the first suspicious male to appear."
"The law enforcement community would have been better served had it spent more energy analyzing the killer’s outrageous backtrack and his piece of chalk instead of getting stuck in the muck of the meaning of 'Juwes.'"
"It looked more like the work of a devil than a man."
"I had heard about the Whitechapel murders but I swear to God I had never expected to see such a sight as this."
"I am dreadfully upset & have hardly done anything but cry ever since."
"If only you knew how much I long to go to sleep for good & all."
"I have been a troublesome sister in many ways."
"There is a strain of waywardness in my character which has neutralized other qualities which should have helped me thru life."
"Old boss you was rite it was the left kidny."
"I see how far from dead is my affection for him."
"As you can see I have done another good thing for Whitechapel."
"I am trying my hand at disjointing, and if can manage it will send you a finger."
"He was probably that sexually insane young doctor who was really a barrister and who threw himself into the Thames."
"Do you suppose we only find anything that is past so touching and interesting because it was further from the grave?"
"Psychopaths don’t accept consequences. They don’t feel sorry—except for the misfortune they bring upon themselves and blame on others."