Customer Reviews

Elizabeth Stride And Jack The Ripper: The Life and Death of the Reputed Third Victim

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

First, let me say that this is not a book for newcomers to the whole 'Jack the Ripper' history. This book is a very specialized study of just one of the alleged victims and it delves into a lot of secondary information that will be beyond the interest of most readers.

For Ripperologists this is a actually a very worthwhile purchase as the background research into Liz Stride's antecedents is quite comprehensive and not at all badly documented in the end-notes. That being said, however, I only give this book 3 stars for a number of reasons:

First, although I very much agree with the ultimate conclusion of the author as to the status of Ms Stride as a Ripper victim, I cannot say the same for many other findings he makes. Mr Yost's assessment of a lot of witness testimony was not at all impressive. He supported a lot of 'evidence' that a lot of investigators have dismissed as unreliable for no better reasons than it seems to fit with his basic beliefs about the case.

I also found that, given the excellent research into Elizabeth Stride's early life, there was so little discussion about her ex-boyfriend, Michael Kidney, and nearly nothing about his background. This was a particularly glaring deficiency, I thought, given the conclusion Mr Yost draws at the end of the book.

Ultimately, I found that the book itself is not at all well organized as a whole. The author introduces various topics, looks at them briefly and then picks up the discussion haphardly, and sometimes repetitively, later on. Frequently, after a particular issue or topic is introduced, the reader struggles through a confusing discussion, only to be is left at a loss as to what point the author is trying make.... I eventually got the impression that Mr Yost is still mulling over a lot of conflicting theories and has not yet reached any settled (or convincing) conclusions over certain aspects of the case that he needs to properly consider.

All the above notwithstanding, I do not regret the money I paid for this work. It stands to be a fixed entry in the whole 'Ripper' genre.