Vivid characters, notably Impressionist painter Claude Monet, distinguish this stand-alone historical by British author Jakeman (Death in the South of France
). The shadow of the 1888 Jack the Ripper murders hangs over Scotland Yard's inquiries 12 years later into the deaths of two women whose mutilated corpses have been dragged from the Thames. Inspector Will Garrety, an honest and dogged investigator, is prepared to follow the trail wherever the evidence leads, but he's hampered by his superiors, who warn him to stay away from upper-class suspects connected with a secluded floor at the Savoy Hotel, which houses officers wounded in the vicious fighting of the Boer War. The author convincingly evokes fin-de-siècle London with its class and gender prejudices, but the early revelation of the killer's identity undercuts the suspense. Moreover, the path of the killer, whose personality will be familiar to Thomas Harris fans, never crosses that of Garrety's, making the ultimate resolution anticlimactic. Should Jakeman decide to make her detective into a series character, she might consider giving him a more challenging adversary and a better puzzle to crack in any sequel. (Mar. 2)
