“What Alice Knew: A Most Curious Tale of Henry James and Jack the Ripper”, by Paula Marantz Cohen

352 pages, Sourcebooks Landmark, ISBN-13: 978-1402243554

Oh, look: another take on the Jack the Ripper murders, this time involving (for some reason) Henry James (one of the greatest novelists in the English language), his brother William (a philosopher and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the US) and their sister Alice (a diarist; not much else to say about her), all of the rich and distinguished American James family. In What Alice Knew: A Most Curious Tale of Henry James and Jack the Ripper by Paula Marantz Cohen, they try to solve the identity of Jack the Ripper. Okay. I mostly liked the book, as Cohen has an eye for detail and invokes the foggy streets of London very well. I also thought that the James Clan were each brought to life once more and made to shine – especially Alice, the bedridden and constantly ill sister; indeed, throughout the novel, it is her insight and intellect which drives the tale.

However, Cohen’s take on whom the actual murder was, for me, rather unsatisfying, and for that the book as a whole left a bad aftertaste. I don’t want to spoil it for you, but it’s for this reason that I am less than enamored with What Alice Knew. As for why Cohen chose the James’ as the vehicles for her Ripper theory, I really have no idea. Granted, as I said, she does an excellent job at writing each of them, but the whole idea of Henry James (novelist) William James (shrink) and Alice James (hysteric) as Victorian detectives strikes me as weird, to say the least. Not a bad detective story at all, just one with too many flaws and eccentricities for me to recommend.