British veteran Gardner (Bottled Spider
) pulls off the rare feat of coming up with a fresh angle on the enduring Jack the Ripper mystery. Londoner Phillip Tarpin has no sooner accepted a prestigious publishing job in New York than he's beset by multiple tragedies, starting with the suspicious deaths of his estranged mother and his fiancée. Soon after he receives the manuscript for a new Ripper exposé by a popular historian, Tarpin is mutilated by a brutal assailant wearing the costume of "The Nemesis of Neglect," a cartoon figure created for a London newspaper at the time of the Whitechapel murders to represent the legendary serial killer. Gardner's fast pacing enables some improbable coincidences and a fantastic motive for murder to be digested without much difficulty. Readers with a taste for intelligent international suspense in the spirit of Frederick Forsyth, as well as the legion of Ripper buffs, should find this an exciting thriller. Agent, Lisa Moylett at Coombs Moylett Literary Agency (U.K.). (Feb.)
