The Sixth Victim

Harris’s historical thriller is set in London’s Whitechapel district during Jack the Ripper’s rampage, but, surprisingly, the infamous slayer, his victims, and the city’s seedy West End are used mainly as backdrop for a tale that focuses on newly clairvoyant flower girl Constance Piper and her search for Emily Tindall, the kindly teacher responsible for her education. Miss Tindall has gone missing, and Constance is worried she may be in danger of becoming the killer’s victim number six. The audio edition usefully employs two actors: reader Dawson provides Miss Tindall’s schoolmistress elocution, softening it when speaking of and with Constance, and reader Hardingham captures Constance’s myriad moods, her delight in the company of her family, her fear of living in Ripperland, and her fierce determination to find her mentor. The actors smoothly and efficiently trade off on the rest of Harris’s characters, including Constance’s sweetly perplexed mum, her streetwise sister, an oddly distracted doctor whose wife has disappeared, and the befuddled Scotland Yard coppers. A Kensington hardcover. (June)