At first muddled and confusing, the book goes on to raise intriguing questions and possibilities for fans of both men.
A father-and-son team exposes the similarities of two very strange men, Jack the Ripper and Arthur Conan Doyle.
The Friedmans intersperse a biography of Doyle with a re-enactment of a tour of a handful of sites where the Ripper’s victims were killed. The original tour, which included Doyle, was an activity undertaken by a group the press referred to as the “Murder Club,” a dining club comprised of professional men who debated popular criminal cases (“admission to the club became one of the most sought-after prizes in the realm”). The authors have cast Doyle as leader of the tour, with a fictitious assortment of Ripper followers, including an American doctor, two ladies, two brothers, a lawyer and a financier. From the first, Doyle becomes the formulaic Holmes character, exuding pedantry and disdain for any theories not his own. His superiority complex and the never-ending scraps of information from his pockets eventually become tedious. The biographical sections of the book are much more interesting, as the authors expose the man with a titanic ego who always had a good excuse for his failures—e.g., even his thesis listed barriers that prevented a better paper. Doyle’s transcripts from medical school have been altered, and his letters home do not gel with actual events as he developed his fiction writing. His medical career never took off, but his schooling exposed him to three brilliant diagnosticians who provided the perfect model for Sherlock Holmes. Throughout, the Friedmans have the tour members discussing the intelligence, surgical ability and misogyny that could apply to both Holmes (Doyle) and the Ripper. The biography ends with the first Holmes mystery published in 1887, the year before the Ripper murders. “It would take four more years for Doyle’s consulting detective to bring him fame and fortune,” write the authors.
At first muddled and confusing, the book goes on to raise intriguing questions and possibilities for fans of both men.Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7570-0348-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Square One Publishers
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
Lyrical and pleasing reflections on machinery, midlife crisis, and sundry other matters. Not long ago Paulsen, a Newbury Honor author of books for children, as well as books for adults (Eastern Sun, Western Moon, 1993, etc.), turned 57 and discovered he had a heart ailment. He also discovered, he writes, that he is a man, in a time when it has become anachronistic to be masculine. To avert the horror of growing old, cuddly, and debilitated, Paulsen went out and bought a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, shopping for which turned out to be a challenge—for a new bike, he learned, he'd have to pay a small fortune and then wait three years for delivery. Arming himself with a used machine, he took to the road, making his way from New Mexico to Alaska and back again, celebrating the freedom afforded him by the Harley-as-extension-of-self. The book that resulted from his trip is really a series of loosely connected essays. One treats the curious career of George Armstrong Custer, whom Paulsen seems intent on rehabilitating. Writing in a Hemingwayesque turn, he takes the line that, while it is politically incorrect to express respect for the doomed general, it is difficult not to admire his courage, and in the end it could be said that he was given his measure of fame—which is more than most men are given. Another essay explores the American worship of know-how, the almost religious aspect of being a mechanic that does not seem to exist in other countries. Still another deals with the myriad ways there are to meet one's maker on the back of a motorcycle, crushed by an errant piece of livestock or splattered by a road-hogging RV. These meditations don't quite add up to a full-tilt memoir, but they make a nice entertainment all the same.
Pub Date: Nov. 3, 1997
ISBN: 0-15-193093-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1997
Candid and inspiring.
Redbook editor-in-chief Morrison finds a bigger, more honest and balanced self amid the ruins of her marriage.
The author had recently been fired from her magazine job, had an infant son and a house in Brooklyn when her husband sighed and pronounced, “I’m done with this.” To his credit, he didn’t bolt or have an affair, but stayed put until they ironed out the divorce process—though it would take a toll. In a firm, bell-clear voice, Morrison charts her passage from misery to redemption. It wasn’t easy, and the story plays well on her confusion—circling, revisiting, contradicting—reading like a tumult of self-recrimination. Hardly a shrinking violet, she lived at a somewhat cool remove, not trusting happiness. She worked too much; nothing was ever enough; she was volatile and dramatic: “The distance between my brain and my mouth is very, very short.” Yet that brain is capacious and active, and Morrison emerges as a sympathetic character, overthinking, overwhelmed and not blind to the irony of “running a magazine all about women and love and marriage and stuff…Isn’t it rich?” There is plenty of unhappiness in these pages—not self-indulgent, but revelatory—and it all leads to genuinely hard-won epiphanies that are gratifyingly modest and useful for readers in similar situations—don’t marinate in anger; beneath fear is solid ground; fix the immediate problems, often things happen “just because”; optimism and forgiveness work wonders. If her comparisons are sometimes unsettling—“divorce is no virus; it’s lung cancer”—readers will get the drift.
Candid and inspiring.Pub Date: March 23, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4165-9556-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2010
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
