The Sixth Victim

April 24, 2017
Harris’s late-Victorian historical, a series launch, is less successful than her Dr. Thomas Silkstone mysteries (The Anatomist’s Apprentice, etc.). Although flower girl Constance Piper must struggle to make a living, she recognizes that she’s better off than the desperate women working the London streets, and she is deeply disturbed when they begin falling prey to the serial killer who will become known as Jack the Ripper. Meanwhile, Constance is preoccupied with another puzzle—the whereabouts of Emily Tindall, a teacher who taught her how to speak and act properly. Part of the problem is the familiar plot. The Ripper murders have been the basis for countless whodunits, and Harris’s depiction of London’s impoverished East End, while solid, is just not at the level of authors such as Paul West and John Brooks Barry. Even focusing on the woman whose torso was found in the building site of what was to become New Scotland Yard—the sixth victim of the title—has been done better by Sarah Pinborough in 2014’s Mayhem. Agent: Melissa Jeglinski, Knight Agency.

July 31, 2017
Harris’s historical thriller is set in London’s Whitechapel district during Jack the Ripper’s rampage, but, surprisingly, the infamous slayer, his victims, and the city’s seedy West End are used mainly as backdrop for a tale that focuses on newly clairvoyant flower girl Constance Piper and her search for Emily Tindall, the kindly teacher responsible for her education. Miss Tindall has gone missing, and Constance is worried she may be in danger of becoming the killer’s victim number six. The audio edition usefully employs two actors: reader Dawson provides Miss Tindall’s schoolmistress elocution, softening it when speaking of and with Constance, and reader Hardingham captures Constance’s myriad moods, her delight in the company of her family, her fear of living in Ripperland, and her fierce determination to find her mentor. The actors smoothly and efficiently trade off on the rest of Harris’s characters, including Constance’s sweetly perplexed mum, her streetwise sister, an oddly distracted doctor whose wife has disappeared, and the befuddled Scotland Yard coppers. A Kensington hardcover.