Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Paul Prye may make his living as professor of urban history at Columbia, but at heart he is mad about crime. So is his wife Alice, art history prof at NYU and wild about Agatha Christie. In 1988, they go to London to celebrate a most curious centenary: Jack the Ripper's bloody safari through the city's dark bypaths and dead ends. Prye retraces the maniac's sinister progress in the company of others similarly smitten, and as marvelous luck would have it, one of their group is murdered. Could it have been an accident, as others insist? Prye knows better (and he is seldom, if ever, wrong). The Yard agrees. Somewhere in the thickets lurks a new Ripper fixated on replicating his master's bloodbath. But Prye's analytic intelligence and Alice's intuitive antennae eventually end the nightmare in this pleasant and clever, if not particularly suspenseful, little nocturnal excursion. (March 31). (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Borowitz, author of dullish true-crime essays (Innocence and Arsenic, 1977), proves even less adept at crime-fiction in this amateurish mystery debut--which takes place in 1988 London, during the centennial of Jack the Ripper's 1888 murder-spree. Prof. Paul Prye (Urban History, Columbia), on vacation abroad with prof-wife Alice (Art History, NYU), is a fanatical crime-history buff. So he naturally joins a walking tour of Jack-the-Ripper murder sites--during which theater-director Margaret Sanders is nearly hit by a speeding motorcycle. Did someone actually push Margaret into the motorcycle's path? So Paul believes. And when the newspaper a few days later announces her death (from natural causes, apparently), Paul is sure that she was murdered. How? By slow-acting ricin poison, of course, delivered by an umbrella-tip jab (remember the famous Markov case) during that motorcycle melee! Paul soon has his suspicions confirmed by Scotland Yard. Furthermore, it quickly becomes apparent that some psycho--determined to outdo Jack the Ripper--is planning to commit a whole string of poisoned-umbrella killings in Ripper-related settings. And Paul will eventually help the Yard to save the last intended victim (the soprano playing Lulu in the Berg opera) from the killer: a woefully implausible, murkily motivated lunatic. Despite this lurid material, however, Borowitz's thin narrative is virtually all talk--with laborious explanations, turgid theorizing, and leaden repartee between the erudite (but tiresome) Pryes. So, while a few of Borowitz's fellow true-crime buffs may enjoy the long-winded chatter about old cases here, suspense fans will find little in the way of character, action, or credible mystery. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
