Customer Reviews

Jack the Ripper: The Simple Truth

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

 

 

Written some seven years prior to Patricia Cornwell's book, "Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper - Case Closed," Bruce Paley's attempt to solve for "x" is the better of the two works.

Paley asked himself a simple question, one that some Ripperologists had overlooked through the years. How could Mary Jane Kelly's on and off again suitor (lover?), Joseph Barnett, have been treated so easily by authorities in the wake of Kelly's slaughter, Friday, November 9, 1888?

After all, Barnett was with Kelly, Thursday night, November 8, even though the two had "separated," Tuesday, October 30 after some 20 months together. He didn't like what she was doing with her body - alcohol and prostitution - and had told her so with some vigor. Barnett did not care for Mary Jane's "friends" and had heatedly told her so. The two had argued these points, among others, shortly after Barnett lost his job as a fish-porter and the arguments continued through October 30.

Wouldn't Barnett have been a prime suspect? A prime "person of interest?" If so, how does he merit but one interview with The Yard, a patty-cake appearance at the inquest - where he did not exactly fare well -- and then walk? Good questions and Paley rolls up his sleeves, jumps in with both feet, and tries to answer those questions and more. This is a good book, but is it the definitive piece on the identity of Jack the Ripper? Maybe. Put it this way -- Barnett is more of a suspect than is Walter Sickert. (But that's another story.)

This is a good, brisk read and Paley's East End, London, 1888 feels perfect. His research is top notch, the book has chapter sources and notes although I wish he'd put the notes right at the end of each chapter. There are two sets of photo/map/diagram inserts and, while most of this has been seen many times before, the map of East London should have been put at the front of the book. On this one map we see the known addresses of Barnett, 1858 - 1888, the murder sites of five Ripper victims and the victims' addresses around the time of their deaths. It is a compelling visual.

Paley's Appendix I could also have been placed at the front of the book. Here we read why Barnett fits the mould of Jack the Ripper, how Barnett fits the mould of the serial killer and the results of the Ripper Project. "The stated aim of the Ripper Project was to find a solution to the Jack the Ripper murders through the application of modern scientific detection techniques." Good stuff and I won't spoil your read with further detail.

Over the years a composite of Saucy Jack has emerged and the reader will have to determine whether or not Barnett fills the bill. Among the particulars -

* The Ripper was an otherwise ordinary White male, able and fit, some 26 to 36 years old.
* He was an employed blue collar worker and an East End resident who knew some or all of his victims.
* Jack may well have known some or all of the beat policemen within the Whitechapel section of London.
* He was educated, fairly well read, and could have gone higher within the British school system but did not for whatever reasons.
* He was a Pub crawler and probably a regular at The Ten Bells.
* Jack loathed prostitution and considered himself to be religious.
* He may have been a regular churchgoer.

Paley may be right. And yet.

Has Paley cleared the bar? Has he shown definitively that an otherwise unremarkable Londoner turned into an armed savage for a brief period, 1888?

You be the judge.

Propelled by unexpected information released to the public under the 100-Year law, this book explains why the Ripper stole the heart of his last victim, and why he killed so many others. With these compelling deductions, the list of suspects is reduced to exactly one: Joseph Barnett, the spurned lover of Mary Jane Kelly, the final Ripper victim. Although the factual evidence for his hypothesis is small, the author deftly makes his case. This book is the kind of history that, if it's not true, it *should* be: it's just too good a tale. By rights it should be a movie by now: a more striking answer for the Ripper riddle has never been made. First-time readers would do better to read Sugden's unsurpassed "Complete History of Jack the Ripper", but those familiar with the case will find this book to be irresistibly insightful.

A plausible answer to the world's most famous whodunnit. This highly readable book combines a fine knack for storytelling with the use of cutting-edge criminal investigation techniques. Bruce Paley breathes new life into the time-worn tale of Jack the Ripper, and succeeds in providing just enough background detail to be thorough, without going overboard and producing a coroner's report. Paley's book is based on the theory that the Ripper was one Joseph Barnett, a man questioned at the time but never charged. Barnett appears to be a perfect match for the sort of serial killer described in today's FBI profiles. The author has documented Barnett's life as much as possible, using contemporary newspapers and police reports as well as the tools of a genealogist: birth and death records, census reports, and more.

In my opinion Paley upholds his contention that Barnett was the Ripper to a much higher degree than advocates of other Ripper theories have upheld theirs. He shows that Barnett had both a credible motive and the sort of troubled background which would induce the desperation needed to push him over the edge. Barnett's own personality remains something of an enigma: his association with the Ripper murders, however significant or oblique, used up his 15 minutes of fame and he spent the rest of his life in total oblivion. Joseph Barnett, the man, is ultimately unknowable to us, as is his putative alter ego, the Ripper; in the end the Ripper got away with it, and Barnett got away from us.

I stopped buying Ripper books after reading this. Paley really does a great job at succinctly packaging the evidence against Barnett --motive, profile-- and, most importantly, what I consider to be the closest thing to a smoking gun in all of the Ripper suspect cases -- the missing key to the last victim's... Barnett's girlfriend's... bedroom. And I disagree with those who say that the profiling is too widely matching; there are just too many characteristics. My only problem with the case -- and with the book -- is that I am not convinced by Paley's assertions that cleaning fish gave Barnett the neccessary "Ripper" skills. Maybe it did, but Paley was weak in making the case for that. Otherwise, very, very good detecting --and great, tight writing-- indeed.

Excellent analysis of why the author thinks Joseph Barnett, a fishpacker and last manfriend of the Mary Kelly, the Ripper's last victim, was Jack the Ripper. Paley uses the FBI system of profiling serial killer suspects and Barnett is an almost perfect fit. To lend color to the crime and criminal, the author paints a vivid picture of the slummier side of Victorian England.

This book is yet another in a long, long line of 'Ripper' books that fails to deliver on it's promise. It claims in the title to offer the 'simple truth' concerning the identity of Jack the Ripper but ultimately provides only a highly speculative and far-fetched theory instead. For all that, however, I enjoyed reading the book and think it has some interesting food for thought for the amateur Ripper-hunter.

Firstly, the book interweaves the examination of the case with an informative look at latter-day Victorian life in general, and the socio-cultural impact of the murders in particular. The writing in these sections of the book is light and pleasantly entertaining, and worth the read for that reason alone. Secondly, and more importantly, I also think the book is significant because it proposes the quite plausible idea that Mary Kelly was killed by her erstwhile boyfriend, Joseph Barnett.

The book subsequently fails however, when the author leaps from its initial, reasonable premise to the highly improbable, and not at all well qualified conclusion that Barnett was responsible for all five canonical murders. A lot of people in reading the preceding statement will immediately respond by saying that if Barnett was, in fact, the murderer of Mary Kelly then wouldn't this make him the Ripper since Mary Kelly was clearly one of the series? My answer to this is that I do not believe that Mary Kelly was killed by the same person who killed Annie Chapman, Polly Nicholls and Catharine Eddowes. This is not the venue to go into all the details of why I believe this but I raise the point because it illustrates a weakness in the book that is shared by almost every other work on the subject, namely that the author completely fails to ask the very pertinent and salient question: Is there a group of women who were all killed by the same hand and, if so, who were they?

Paley, like so many others, has clearly taken on faith CID Chief Constable Macnaghten's bold and not terribly well-informed assertion that the so called canonical five women there were the 5, and only 5 victims of the Whitechapel murderer. He states, without giving any reason why, that Martha Tabram was not a Ripper victim and then informs us that the Ripper murders ceased with the death of Mary Kelly. He never makes any mention of either Alice Mackenzie or Francis Coles who were both murdered after Kelly and who have each been regarded by some, both now and at the time, as being Ripper victims. It seems unlikely that anyone as obviously well-read as Mr Paley could be unaware of these names so one has to conclude that this is yet another case of an author simply ignoring potential evidence that conflicts with a pet theory.

The book actually gets quite silly in places, such as where Paley offers as 'evidence' the fact that the most famous of the Ripper letters to the press refers to a ginger beer bottle and then points out that ginger beer bottles were found in the room shared by Kelly and Barnett. For all it's shortcomings, however, I still enjoyed reading the book as a whole. Had Mr Paley managed to satisfy himself by simply offering up Barnett as a candidate for the murderer of Mary Kelly I would happily have given the book 5 stars. It is a shame he got carried away with himself.

C John Thompson

I read the Ripper Project a long time ago and I am pleased that someone has thought to include it in this insightful book. Don't miss this book

One of the more recent in a long line of Jack the Rippers is Joe Barnett, the lover of the last victim, Mary Kelly. Bruce Paley first proposed Barnett as the Ripper in a 1982 article, and now offers a fuller explication of his thesis in _Jack the Ripper: The Simple Truth_.

Of course, proving the Ripper's identity is a very tough job, so Paley, like many who went before, settles for trying to prove that Joe Barnett was the kind of man who _might_ have committed the Ripper murders. Even in terms of this more modest task, Paley fails.

Paley bases his contention on the work of pioneering FBI behavioral profiler Robert Ressler and the "Ripper Project," an effort to use modern psychological profiling techniques to paint a portrait of the Ripper. Unfortunately, much is unknown about Barnett's background, requiring Paley to state that several of the criteria "have of necessity been omitted from the list, as there is no way of determining how they might be relevant to Joseph Barnett."

Sadly, this leaves Paley with a list of characteristics that could apply to thousands of East London men. The only mildly interesting item is that the Ripper may have had a speech impediment. Barnett was reported to have stuttered on the witness stand at the inquest into Mary Kelly's murder. In such a situation, Barnett would have been nervous and emotional (even if he wasn't the killer), and Paley offers no evidence that Barnett stuttered at normal times.

Time and time again, Paley tells us what "could have" happened, what "might have" happened, what "probably" happened, and what "must have" happened.

As seasoned "ripperologists" will know, these phrases appear in many books on the Ripper, and are equivalent to an announcement that the writer has no evidence that this is what happened.

_Jack the Ripper: The Simple Truth_ is worth a look, if only for its striking depiction of life in the East End in 1888. But ignore the stuff about Jack the Ripper

All other reviews are about theprinted version and I agree with them that the book itself is quite good and interesting and well written. But the Kindle version is plain awful. There are several errors on each page that accounts for a very basic and amateurish scan and OCR conversion that nobody bother to check in just a few pages. In parts you can not read it as the meaning is completely ruined.

Onm a printed bbok I would surely demand a refund as it is a faulty, damaged product that it does not make justice to the author. If I were the author I would demand that the digital version corresponds in all integrity to the written version.

Stick to the written version and stay away from this!

I read Mr Ressler's book on criminal profiling a short while ago. Creepy,but effective.