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Book Review: THE HYPNO-RIPPER (2021) edited by Donald K. Hartman

6/21/2021

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A few years ago, researcher and scholar Donald K. Hartman presented Death by Suggestion (2018), an entertaining and surprisingly diverse collection of Victorian-era crime stories where villains controlled their victims (and victims occasionally turned the tables) through hypnotism. His new, highly readable publication is The Hypno-Ripper, and it showcases two stories where auto-suggestion is interwoven through the infamous saga of Jack the Ripper. The first is a novel-length dying man’s narrative called “The Whitechapel Mystery”, published by a Chicago press in 1889. The second, shorter tale is “The Whitechapel Horrors”, appearing in print in 1888. As the five canonical Ripper victims had been killed between August and November of 1888, both stories were designed to capitalize on the recent headlines and add speculative sensation to the already vivid Ripper legend.

The two tales are both enjoyably dark crime stories and fascinating artifacts of near turn-of-the-19th century creative nonfiction. As editor Hartman points out, the stories were written quickly for American publication, but there is a breathless charm to them as the narrator in each travels from the United States to England and gets enmeshed in the serial killings. In “Mystery”, whose author is credited as one N. T. Oliver, detective John Dewey’s search for a bank robber leads him onto the trail of a charismatic man with the power to control others. “Horrors” is presented with this subtitle: “A conjectural story relating the facts concerning four of the murders.” The narrator is another luckless American, Charles Kowlder, and although this story’s author is unknown, it is possible (and even likely) that both were written by the same colorful con man of a scribe: Edward Oliver Tilburn.

In the book’s final section, Hartman provides a fascinating and well-researched biography of Tilburn, alias N. T. Oliver and “Nevada Ned”, and the man’s rollercoaster of a life does not disappoint. In sum, Tilburn – sometimes with an “E” at the end of his name, sometimes not, but usually with an unearned honorific like “Dr.” or “Ph.D.” attached – was a patent medicine huckster, an author, a preacher, a professor, a realtor, and a man of business to the American towns and people he would descend upon, swindle, and leave. Generally, Tilburn’s writing days came early in his kaleidoscopic career, when he would be commissioned to build 200 pages around a weeks-old event. In one hurried book, he leaned heavily on recent published reporting to flesh out a story involving the St. Louis cyclone. In another instance, when the discovery of a prominent community member’s body in a basin caused a sensation, his publisher asked for a 50,000 word novel on the subject in seven days; Tilburn delivered.
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Between the two accounts of Jack the Ripper being aided in his gruesome mission through mesmerism and the stranger-than-fiction character sketch of the author, The Hypno-Ripper offers a really intriguing set of stories and a curious blend of tabloid fantasy and historical detail. The text is accompanied by many great images, from the unsettling original artwork of Rob Sajda in the Ripper tales to the snake-oil advertisements and articles recounting the scandalous conduct of Edward O. Tilburn. A very unique and enjoyable book.

I received an advance copy for review.



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Book Review: THAT AFFAIR NEXT DOOR (1897) by Anna Katharine Green

2/1/2020

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Over here in the States, Poisoned Pen Press is getting ready to release its first book in their exciting new series The Library of Congress Crime Classics. The spotlight will be on American mystery and detective fiction initially published in the genre's Golden Age. For the inaugural title, the editors have reached back to the end of the 19th century to spotlight a female author who created a resilient older woman amateur detective, paving the way for spinster sleuths like Agatha Christie's Miss Marple and Stuart Palmer's Hildegarde Withers.

That Affair Next Door (1897) is one of several crime stories penned by the influential genre writer Anna Katharine Green, whose first and most famous novel, 1878's The Leavenworth Case, became a celebrated best-seller on publication. Green's historical timing places her after Poe and as a contemporary of Conan Doyle, so she has a lot of open space to innovate and explore within the nascent medium of detective fiction. That Affair Next Door proves to be an intriguing book both in literary context and on its own, and it is one well worth reading a century and a quarter later.


At the heart of this Affair is Miss Amelia Butterworth, a cultured and unattached older lady in New York society who has a penchant for nosing around in other people's comings and goings, literally. Hearing a horse-drawn cab pulling up to the house opposite hers just before midnight, she watches from her window as two figures emerge, one male and one female, and make their way towards the front door of the empty Van Burnam estate. When a distraught cleaning woman appears the following morning, Miss Amelia makes sure to gain access to the house, thus beating the police to a crime scene: a woman's body lies crushed underneath an overturned cabinet.

Soon, law officials appear, among them Detective Ebenezer Gryce, who is even older than the neighbor who is now acting as amateur sleuth. With a sense of competitiveness inflamed and a desire to prove that she can observe and draw conclusions as astutely as any policeman, Miss Amelia sets out on her own investigation. Her objectives include finding the identity of the midnight visitors, learning why the woman arrived without a hat (a societal faux pas surely), and discovering what the cleaning woman knows that she is not telling Detective Gryce. These initial questions lead to others, and an inquest in which the two Van Burnam brothers, Howard and Franklin, give testimony only creates further mystification. Both the professional and the amateur detective are determined to find a solution to the murder, but it is quite likely they might not arrive at the same one. 

By this point, Ebenezer Gryce had become the author's series character, having appeared in The Leavenworth Case and other novels. But it is definitely Miss Amelia Butterworth and her personality who drives the story here, narrating in a proud and defiant first-person point-of-view and journeying all over town to collect clues and interview those who might have information. Green paints a winning picture of her self-assured protagonist, and she does a masterful job of keeping Miss Amelia just on the side of likeability, despite a very healthy ego (read: sense of self-importance) and a propensity to be stubborn and empirical. But these strong traits, along with her fearlessness, serve her well, and without this memorable character intellectually and physically driving the story, the murder mystery aspect would lose much of its urgency and charm.  

For That Affair Next Door is a lengthy text; it is actually separated into four "books" in the sectional fashion of the time. Printed editions average around 400 pages, and while the prose is not ornate and is easily accessible to modern readers, Green still indulges in the deliberate and verbose syntax one finds in her near-contemporaries like Wilkie Collins and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Whenever Miss Amelia switches from active sleuth to passive audience member, such as during her attendance at the Van Burnam inquest, the book's pacing immediately slows. Fortunately, those moments are few, and she is soon back to her winningly active ways.

There is much here to interest armchair sociologists, and Anna Katharine Green's depiction of turn-of-the-century New England moneyed society, while never critical or overt, is still intriguing. (Green was a member of this group, with her father a successful lawyer.) The Poisoned Press edition provides footnotes, some of which help offer historical context. Miss Butterworth's interview of a Chinese laundry worker, described as "a member of that abominable race", is an unflattering but not unsympathetic stereotype and an artifact of its time, when the "yellow peril" theme in American literature was especially virulent in the late 1900s, as one footnote reminds us.

And last but definitely not least, the mystery itself is a solid one, with some neat shifts in perception and a rather unique murder method, especially as the death-by-furniture scenario partly masks another lethal act. As usually happens with early thrillers that also mix romance and melodrama, there are a couple coincidences and quixotic character behaviors that don't quite convince the modern reader, but by the end of Book Four and the truce arrived at between the competing detectives, the story is satisfying and concludes with all of the pieces assembled and accounted for.

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I had never managed to read a mystery from genre pioneer Anna Katharine Green, so I am grateful that the new Library of Congress Crime Classics series has introduced me to the author and her energetic heroine at the heart of That Affair Next Door. The title is available for pre-order and will be released in the U.S. on April 7. I'm very excited to see what other American authors and titles the editors have planned for the series, and I only hope that the schedule allows for a release of more books, and not less, with each year! I received an advance copy from Poisoned Pen Press via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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Book Review: PIERRE ET JEAN (1888) by Guy de Maupassant

8/19/2017

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I have long been a fan of works of the French naturalists and impressionists of the later 19th century. My reading of these authors and this literature, while occasionally scattershot, has almost always been rewarding and intriguing. Flaubert, Zola, Balzac, Stendhal, and now – surprisingly, for the first time – Guy de Maupassant, whose slender novel Pierre et Jean incorporates his naturalist objective on every page. The author takes his brief but powerful story about two brothers who learn, through an outside inheritance, a perception-shifting secret and synchronizes it with the weather, mood, and metaphor of the port town Le Havre; by doing so, he is able to able to externalize the inner conflict of its key characters.

Older brother Pierre Roland, a newly minted doctor who is poised to take his first steps at establishing a practice, receives most of the novel's focus, and it is through Pierre that the reader most clearly tracks the changing emotions of the family. Maréchal, an old acquaintance, dies and leaves a legacy to the Rolands, which seems like a blessing for the economically confined family. But the money is left only to Pierre's younger brother Jean, who providentially wants to use the windfall to set up his law office. Although Roland père seems to have no curiosity over the inheritance, the gesture creates a chain of doubts in Pierre: Why has his brother benefited but not him? Why do he and Jean bear little physical resemblance? Just what was Maréchal's relationship to the family?

Maupassant gives each moment, linked to a fleeting but powerfully present emotion, a chance for exploration as Pierre modulates from suspicion to denial to jealousy to anger to self-pity. This is very much a novel of psychology, and even though the characters operate from a social and moral perspective that's more than a century old (and a culture removed from this American), every beat seems relatable and right. The weather and setting mirror Pierre's emotions in a way that is both poetic and real, where a clear day of sailing gives way to cold, enveloping fog, much as his private doubts begin to seep in and affect a sunnier outlook:

As he neared the harbor he heard out to sea a mournful, sinister plaint, like the bellowing of a bull, but longer drawn out and more powerful. It was the wail of a siren, the wail of ships lost in a fog… Pierre walked faster and reached the jetty, thinking of nothing now, content to enter this lugubrious, moaning darkness.   (trans. Leonard Tancock)
And in Maupassant's own words:
"En approchant du port il entendit vers la pleine mer une plainte lamentable et sinistre, pareille au meuglement d'un taureau, mais plus longue et plus puissante. C'était le cri d'une sirène, le cri des navires perdus dans la brume… Pierre gagna la jetée a grands pas, ne pensant plus a rien, satisfait d'entrer dans ces ténèbres lugubres et mugissantes."
As a study of human vulnerability, Pierre et Jean is a lovely small-scale work. True pathos is generated through Maupassant's craft and creation of his characters, even as they react in a way that can be considered self-serving or melodramatic. They may be overreacting to a situation that is not life-alteringly tragic when viewed objectively, but the genuineness of their feelings is never in doubt. The story ends on a note that is perfectly bittersweet, with each of the principal characters pursuing a mutual dénouement that seems right in theory but, as the author nimbly crafts the moment, may hardly be the proper solution for anyone. It's a fitting conclusion to a very perceptive – and deceptively simple – book, a tale where naturalism and literate poetry share the page.
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