Book Of The Month Club

[How Brown]

Reviving an old idea here from waaaay back:

Anyone care to select a book ( either Ripper fiction, such as the works of Porter,Perring,or Oliver ...or Ripper fact, such as some guy named Begg or Fido, Morris, Hinton, Paley...etc...) to discuss ? How about A.P.'s work?

We could spend a month on it...or even more.

Anyone care to step to the fore and make a suggestion?

[Debbie D]

Reviving an old idea here from waaaay back:

Anyone care to select a book ( either Ripper fiction, such as the works of Porter,Perring,or Oliver ...or Ripper fact, such as some guy named Begg or Fido, Morris, Hinton, Paley...etc...) to discuss ? How about A.P.'s work?

We could spend a month on it...or even more.

Anyone care to step to the fore and make a suggestion?

Hmmmm... I would suggest Porter's book. I finally got my copy and read it a few weeks ago. I really enjoyed it. :thumbsupbud:

[How Brown]

Well by God woman...lets discuss it.

You go first.:kiss:

[Rescue Dog]

How and Debbie,

I'm highly flattered that you are going to discuss 'A Study in Red' here on the forum, and have only posted this reply so that you can have the cover displayed here on the thread during your discussions. I shall now withdraw, and bury my head inthe sand for a few weeks and leave you and the members to discuss the novel free from irritating comments by the author. (I may look in from time to time in case anyone has a question, but nothing more, I promise).

Best regards and happy chatting.

Brian:tape:

P.S. The sequel is well underway.

[How Brown]

Flattered you may be,sir...but deserving of the praise....as are Jana Oliver and Bill Perring... two very fine authors as well.

I think people (civilians) might be more attracted to Ripperology at this time from reading the modern magazines...and fiction work...rather than suspect-based books...at least at this point in time in our field's history.

You three have done your share to improve the field and I know Mike Covell feels the same way.

So...being a nouveau gentleman....I'll wait for Ms. Dobbins to begin discussing "A Study In Red".

[Debbie D]

I'm not good at starting discussions. For the most part I drop comments here and there :tape: but here goes.

Believe it or not I read the book cover to cover in one sitting. It had me wanting to know where it was going so bad I couldn't put it down. I didn't like what the Dr. was doing in-between reading the diary pages; that part was kind of dry. I also didn't think the part about the Dr. going to police station to talk with a serial killer really added much to it. Otherwise I really enjoyed looking into the fictional version of Jack's mind. I can't help think that the real Jack had very similar feelings and thoughts.

Ok there's my start... add your thoughts here....:kiss:

Ps. I really enjoyed the cover art.

[Mike Covell]

I too read the book in one sitting, then again, then again. Brian puts a lot of work into his books and this is the best Ripper Fiction I have ever read.

Saying that, it's a genre I don't really read much of, but Brian's work has made me by other Ripper Fiction so I am warming to it.

I loved the story and enjoy travelling into the dark sides of the human psyche, a job Brian has pulled off well.

And if I was to judge a book by it's cover, Brian's book would have me in a frenzy wanting to read it.

[How Brown]

The inevitable scenario which unfolds in the book ( from the perspective of the great-grandfather ) would present a problem to an individual living in the LVP...and maybe even today. It would give the game away to discuss too much of what scenario that is...but thats an aspect of Brian's book that I enjoyed and assumed when I read it.

Debbie and Mike know what I'm referring to here. Putting myself in the great-grandfather's shoes for the entire story and not in the narrator's stead, made my 'reading" of the book different than perhaps someone else's would be. How would you deal with that realization like the great grandfather did?

I know Nina enjoyed the book very much from the perspective of the narrator's point of view.

Did anyone else "get into" the role of the great grandfather and what went through his mind considering what had fallen into his lap?

[Mike Covell]

Howard, I am a great fan of horror movies, and when I watch them I put myself in the shoes of the nut job psycho killer!

This making it fun to creep around and get the dumb blonde!

My wife (a blonde) puts herself in the victims shoes and spends much of her time hiding behind pillows.

It is the same when I read a book, a look for people I can relate too, then look for whatever the flip side is, I find it fun and just as entertaining!

[Debbie D]

I agree with Mike, I'm not really big on the idea of Ripper fiction but I did like this very much. I wondering (if the author would care to jump in) where the idea for the story came from? Or how it evolved? And how long did it take you to write it?:ranger:

[Rescue Dog]

I agree with Mike, I'm not really big on the idea of Ripper fiction but I did like this very much. I wondering (if the author would care to jump in) where the idea for the story came from? Or how it evolved? And how long did it take you to write it?:ranger:


Having been asked to 'jump in' by Debbie, I think the best way to answer the question of how the book came about is for me to reproduce the article I wrote for the Journal of The Whitechapel Society. Frogg Moody at the Society asked me the same question and requested an article that addressed the genesis of the book.

If I can be of further help, please let me know.

Regards

Brian:becky:

“Whodunnit?”… “I dunno.”
Brian L Porter, Author of ‘A Study in Red – The Secret Journal of Jack the Ripper’

I think the year was nineteen-seventy one, or thereabouts. I was a young man serving in the Royal Air Force, stationed atop the Cotswolds at a now long-closed base known as RAF Little Rissington. The camp was a couple of miles from the picturesque village of Bourton-on-the-Water, but seemed to my young mind to be light years from the rest of civilisation. Why, I used to ask myself, was the address of the camp given as Cheltenham when in fact that city lay over 50 miles away? Off duty life could be, and invariably was rather boring for a teenage airman at that remote, and as I though it desolate spot.
It was during the particularly cold winter of that year that I discovered the treasury that was the camp library. With little to do outside of my duties, and nowhere to go as I didn’t yet have a driving licence or the financial means to obtain a car, I began to immerse myself in a quest for knowledge. History had always been a particular favourite of mine at school, and so it was only logical that I began to choose and read books with a historical angle to them. It was here, in the midst of a Cotswold winter, that I first came ‘face to face’ with the story of Jack the Ripper.
To this day I can’t remember the title of the book that first brought the Whitechapel murders to my attention. I recall it being a heavy volume of ‘Great and Unsolved Crimes of the Past’ or something of that ilk. Whatever the title, one piece in that book caught my attention, and in truth has held it ever since. I recall it as being less than three pages long, that piece about Jack the Riper, but something in the words on those pages raised an awareness in me that hadn’t existed before that day. I’d previously heard of Jack of course, but I suppose my young mind had until then lumped him together with such fictional monsters as Count Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster. Now, here he was, revealed in black and white as being as real as I was, a predator who had managed to remain hidden and unidentified for almost a century.
I began to read as much as I could on the subject of the murders, even joining a mail order book club in order to try and find more information on my new pet obsession. I devoured everything I could read, and tried to watch any television programme or movie that depicted the Whitechapel Murders, whether in a factual or fictional scenario.
It soon became clear to me that no-one had the faintest idea who Jack the Ripper really was. There was a huge list of suspects, and a case could, an indeed was made out for many of them as being ‘prime suspects’ in the case. With such a welter of names to pick from it seemed to me that it would be easy to pick a name and then try to build a case to fit the facts surrounding that suspect, as I’m sure has been the case in many so-called renderings of the case. I had no idea who the Ripper was, and if truth be told, I would still hesitate to reveal the name of my own chief suspect as, like many before me, I have only the words of others, and a few scraps of factual evidence on which to base my assumption of guilt. Over the years, many ‘new’ suspects have been put forward as candidates for the role of Jack. I doubt we’ll ever know who he was, but it will continue to be fun trying to solve the great unsolvable mystery of the Autumn of Terror.
So my own quest for knowledge went on, and the years went by, and I continued to read and watch, and absorb all the minutiae that would occasionally find its way into the media, revealing yet more so-called facts and ‘incredible discoveries’ about the most infamous serial killer of them all. I devoured the works of Begg, Fido, Skinner and so many others in my search for information.
When my own son was born and grew to be a young man of around ten, he realised that his father was interested in the Jack the Ripper case. As he grew older, he encouraged me to write a book on the subject. “I can’t,” I’d always reply. “I don’t know who did it.”
“Neither does anyone else Dad,” would be his reply, and of course he was right, though it wasn’t until three years ago that his years of cajoling finally began to bear fruit. I’d written a poem some years before that had been published in a small anthology. I’d given it the title of ‘A Study in Red’ and it had been an attempt to present the killings from the aspect of the Ripper’s mind, as though the poem were a confession of sorts. When, three years ago I showed the poem to a friend who happened to be a writer and publisher, he said that if he ever wrote a dark psychological thriller, he’d love to use it as his introduction. He never got the chance!
From that day, the idea of writing a novel based on the poem grew in my mind until the novel that is ‘A Study in Red’ began to take shape. Once more, I delved into the past, using my own books, and the wonderful forums of Stephen P Ryder’s Casebook to research and refresh my own memories and thoughts on the case. I didn’t want to write a ‘factual’ book. I don’t consider myself to be enough of an authority on the subject to do such a thing, which after all has been handled so well and so expertly by many far better qualified than I over the years.
No, I decided it would be a novel, and one that looked at the case from a rather different angle than most previous Ripper novels. In fact ‘A Study in Red’ in some ways could be said not to be about Jack the Ripper at all. It is in fact the story of one man’s descent into mental instability as a result of reading the so-called journal of the Ripper. What makes it terrifying, (I hope) is the underlying thought that is transmitted to the reader, that Robert Cavendish is somehow connected to the Ripper both by birth and historical events. The fictional journal I created is the tool by which we see how a so-called sane and ordinary man (Cavendish is a psychiatrist) can be pulled to the edge of the precipice, that thin dividing line between madness and sanity, simply by being exposed to the words of an evil and brutal mind. I was able to throw forward certain ideas and theories as to the motives behind the ripper murders in my fictional scenario, without having to worry too much about them being ridiculed by the so-called ‘experts’ This is after all, a work of fiction, and as such, I allowed myself a little licence here and there to indulge my own particular theories as to who and what inspired Jack to take to the streets, and as to why he was never caught or identified. I hope those who read it will forgive me my transgressions.
In the end, the greatest difficulty I faced in creating the novel was that my own prime suspect simply wouldn’t fit the profile I’d drawn up for the fictional Jack the Ripper of the book. So, being a fictional account, I was able to use another suspect, one who I don’t personally believe to have been the Ripper, but who certainly would fit the profile. Do you see what I meant earlier about using a few facts to enable a suspect to be drawn into the frame for the murders? Here was a prime example of that. I wove a web of fact and fiction together in order to create what I hope will be accepted as an entertaining piece of Ripper fiction. A Study in Red was never intended to throw new light on the case, or to identify Jack the Ripper to a waiting world. So far, those who’ve read it have, for the most part, been highly complimentary of my fiction.
I hope it continues to entertain and perhaps terrify a few readers as time goes by. But, as to the burning question, “Whodunnit?”
I have to say, quite simply, “I dunno.” (Though I do believe Bruce Paley had a point).

Brian L Porter is a member of The American Authors Association, The Military Writers Society of America, The Whitechapel Society 1888, and is also the author of the Preditors & Editors Award nominated novel ‘The Nemesis Cell’ (Stonehedge Publishing), currently in e-book and soon to be released in paperback by Still Waves Publishing. Also look out for his forthcoming releases, ‘Purple Death’, ‘Glastonbury’, ‘Pestilence’, and ‘Avenue of the Dead’. Details are available from www.freewebs.com/brianlp (http://www.freewebs.com/brianlp)

Published in The Journal of The Whitechapel Society 1888, Edition Twenty, June 2008, Copyright, Brian L Porter

[Mike Covell]

Kids have all the ideas huh!

My son Bradley is 4 and knows his daddy writes, but doesn't know what I write about. He sits on my knee when I am typing and is often in the back ground playing when I am digitising my research. He knows I "work" in Libraries and archive centres but does not know what I actually do.

My daughter Alyssa is 2 this month, her life is simpler and she asks no questions!!

[Debbie D]

Wow, that goes back furhter than I had thought. Kids can make us do the darndest things, no?

Might there be any plans for a second work of Ripper fiction?:frog:

[How Brown]

Deb:

I've become a big fan of the work of the three people I mentioned at the beginning of the thread. I sincerely suggest you check out their work as well...and hope to have "months" to discuss their work.

Thanks for supplying that Brian. Debbie beat me to it.

[Rescue Dog]

Might there be any plans for a second work of Ripper fiction?:frog:

Debbie,

I have started writing a sequel to 'A Study in Red'. Even though I've only written a couple of chapters, the publisher has already accepted the book for publication for next year, (thier way of putting the pressure on perhaps?).

Without giving away too much to those who haven't read the first book yet, I did leave an 'open door' to the sequel that was already in my mind, and 'My Name is Jack' is the working title of the sequel.

Regards

Brian:becky:

[Mike Covell]

I get excited by the prospect of a sequel, I shall keep a look at Brian.

How did you go about getting an agent and publisher?

[Rescue Dog]

I get excited by the prospect of a sequel, I shall keep a look at Brian.

How did you go about getting an agent and publisher?

Hi Mike,

In the case of A Study in Red, things wnt a bit back-to-front. i'd already had a couple of novels published as e-books through a good publisher in the USA, having approached them myself and being accpeted by them One of them, 'The Nemesis Cell' was nominated in The Preditors & Editors Annual Readers Awards and came 6th in the Mystery Novel Category. I'd already had A Study in Red accepted for publication by Double Dragon, after an editor friend of mine recommended the book to the publisher in Canada, and it was released at roughly the same tim eas the awrds in the P & E Poll were announced.

Within a week of 'The Nemesis Cell' achieving it's Top Ten finish in the poll I was approached by an agent in the USA who said she'd like to represent me with a view to finding a publisher willing to do a paperback version of 'The Nemesis Cell'. One thing led to anohter and now she has found 'homes' for five more of my novels which are all due out this year. As for the sequel to A Study in Red, that one is strictly between my publisher and me as my agent wasn't involved in any of the negotiations for the original and I can work directly and happily with Double Dragon.

'The Nemesis Cell' is due to appear in print in August, alongside 'Glastonury' in a literary double-header release.

Best regards

Brian:becky:

[Debbie D]

I for one, will be anxious to read the sequel.:high5: