The Frightened Man

Jack the Ripper may be back to his old tricks in 1900 London in Cameron’s chilling tale of prostitution, evisceration and voyeurism. General Denton, an expatriate U.S. Civil War veteran and former frontier sheriff turned novelist, receives a visit one night from a frightened stranger, R. Mulcahy, who claims to have seen Jack the Ripper on the street. Denton and his sidekick, Sergeant Atkins, dismiss Mulcahy as a mad man, but soon afterward they spot a newspaper headline (“Unspeakable Mutilation of a Young Victim”) about the murder of a street girl, Stella Minter. Driven by his instincts as an author and by demons from his tortured past, Denton begins a relentless search for clues to the killer. Through the offices of pettifogging police officials, seedy settlement houses and garish pubs, Denton and social worker Janet Striker trace Stella’s pitiful life until the stunning and violent climax. Cameron with his son writes military thrillers under the pseudonym Gordon Kent (The Spoils of War ). (May)