Pariah

This energetic and slightly supernatural rendering of the Jack the Ripper story is requisitely gruesome, darkly funny, and seriously creepy. In 2011, journalist and author Charlie Faultless is hoping to write a book about a series of Ripper-inspired murders in 1996 that claimed the lives of his mother and his lover. Shortly after he returns to his roots in the gutted housing projects of London’s East End, the killings begin again. Faultless is soon the primary suspect, harassed by a zealously vengeful police superintendent. With disciplined dexterity, Emson vaults among three time periods while presiding over a sizable and dissimilar cast, all of them integral and none underplayed. The mystery is not the identity of Jack the Ripper, who is a ruthlessly macabre and often brutally humorous presence throughout, nor his motive or choice of victims. It lies instead in Faultless’s grimly desperate quest to discover his own role in the entirety of the story. While the bloody revelation is not wholly convincing, Emson’s ambition will keep readers impressed and engaged. (July)