Nocturnal Book Reviews

3.5/5 stars
What if famous Jack The Ripper got tired of London and moved to a fresher start in New York? With that concept I was hooked.

This is a pretty good historical fiction, systematic, meticulous and... slightly boring. I found it interesting but more from the scientific point of view.

Both Jameson and Argenti are good partners. Jamison is a criminologist from London, aristocratic, sophisticated and slightly mentally disturbed. Argenti is an American who went from a beat cop to a detective and who knows the streets of New York from the inside out.

When they get partnered there is a little bit of tension, mostly because Jameson is clueless of the cultural and societal gap between them and sometimes does bizarre, snobby things, but the reader forgives him because his heart is in the right place.

The Ripper is an intriguing character and we don't see who he is until the very end, but there is also a dirty political power struggle going on a the same time, making the investigation unnecessary muddled.

One of the local mafia bosses bids on a corrupt policeman to become a chief, and to do that he needs to be the one to solve the Ripper case, which is why Jameson and Argenti stumble through many more delays and obstacles than they should have had.

Overall, Letters from A Murderer would have benefited from a faster pace and less dry main characters, but otherwise it was a nice book.