cover image People of Abandoned Character

People of Abandoned Character

Clare Whitfield. Head of Zeus (IPG, dist.), $24.95 (432p) ISBN 978-1-83893-273-2

In 1888, Susannah Chapman, the narrator of Whitfield’s uneven debut, marries Thomas Lancaster, a surgeon at London Hospital, where she used to work as a nurse. Susannah, who grew up poor, looks forward to a comfortable life with Thomas, but after their blissful honeymoon, he starts treating her harshly and exhibits a violent streak. The morning after the murder of a prostitute, who’s later identified as possibly Jack the Ripper’s first victim, Susannah finds scratches on Thomas’s neck, which he claims were inflicted by a cat he tried to rescue, and she spots his fiercely loyal housekeeper, who was once his nanny, trying to wash bloodstains out of the doctor’s shirts. Her suspicions only increase as the killing spree, attributed to the Ripper, continues. Whitfield does a decent job of keeping her audience guessing whether the obvious explanation is the true one, but the closing revelations come as a letdown. Readers interested in a similar plotline will be better served by Peter Ackroyd’s superior The Trial of Elizabeth Cree. (May)