They All Love Jack: Busting the Ripper

Robinson's thought-provoking but flawed study of Jack the Ripper falls short of his goal of clearly establishing that lyricist Michael Maybrick, a "superstar who created some of the most celebrated music of the Victorian epoch," led a murderous double life. Much of the book focuses on the Freemasons. Robinson effectively sets the groundwork for his allegations of corruption and cover-up by starting with the 1889 Cleveland Street scandal, in which the British government subverted justice to conceal that Queen Victoria's grandson was frequenting a homosexual brothel. He is much less persuasive in other charges, such as when he argues that Stephen Knight, who connected Freemasonry to the crime in 1976's Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution, was a patsy used by secret forces to offer a theory full of holes that would undermine any future effort to blame Masons. The narrative assumes a degree of familiarity with minutiae that the lay reader will not have. Even those who believe that evidence of the killings was covered up will find Robinson's work speculative rather than conclusive. (Oct.)