Product Description

Whitechapel, 1888; Jack the Ripper is committing his last known act of butchery in the hovel occupied by the luckless harlot Mary Kelly. And beneath the bed on which the fiend is cheerfully eviscerating his victim cowers a 15-year-old boy. This is just the start of an extraordinary adventure.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #95963 in Books
• Published on: 1993-09-16
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

Review
At their best, Laymon's cackling horrors (The Stake, 1991; Night Visions 7, 1989) are the nastiest around - sleek, black-humored, skirting (if not slipping over) the edge of pornoviolence. Here, though, he injects them into a floundering picaresque historical about Jack the Ripper - set partly in the Old West - resulting in his only seriously dull book yet. Even Laymon's usual thrumming prose is missing here, replaced by a faux-plucky narration ("It wasn't a job I could walk away from"; "Right then I vowed to save her") by 15-year-old Londoner Trevor Bentley, who, one dark-and-stormy night in 1988, goes searching for a bobby to corral the lout who's beaten his mom. Wandering the streets, Trevor is attacked by thugs who strip him; seeking clothes, he breaks into an apartment but hides under the bed when the occupant returns - a whore accompanied by none other than the Ripper, who mutilates the woman while the boy cowers inches below: a wicked beginning that Laymon soon squanders. Trevor follows "the fiend" only to be shanghaied - along with luscious young Trudy Armitage - aboard the Armitage family yacht, which the Ripper has pirated, aiming to sail to the fresh killing-ground of America. Sundry tortures, mostly of Trudy, make the voyage pass quickly; arriving in the US, the Ripper rips Trudy and escapes, trailed by Trevor, who loses his prey but is taken in by a retired general and his daughter, who tutors the boy in sex. Long months later, reading of savage murders in Tombstone, Trevor rides the rails west, where he takes up with outlaws, dallies with yet another pretty girl, and, at last, confronts the Ripper in a blood-spouting finale. Laymon dedicates this meandering mistake to his agent, who, he says, suggested "an English setting...so this book is your fault." Okay - but Laymon himself should have known better. And next time, with luck, will. (Kirkus Reviews)

Customer Reviews

totally unexpected
this book is not wriiten in typical Laymon style though
surprisingly still very enjoyable. I would like to have seen
Trevor end back in London with his mother as i would have loved a sloppy
ending - this book is well worth a read.

By far the best Laymon book
This book is an adventure that every Laymon fan and horror fan should experience.
I can read this book over and over again. It has everything a good horror story should have.
I would give it 11 out of 10!!!

Brilliant - check it out!!
Great Stuff!! A non-supernatural horror/thriller, following a young lad's pursuit of Jack the Ripper from 19th Century Whitechapel, London over the Atlantic Ocean, across America to Tombstone, Arizona.

Very accessible right from the start, the author gives us plenty of action with delightful, unexpected twists and turns throughout. There is an abundance of believable characters, without going too over the top with superfluous detail/past history. A bit saucy in places without becoming too explicit, and violent in others without being too gratuitous; first class ingredients for a ripping yarn blended expertly. A great ending too.

A large book that will totally absorb you - take it on holiday, you WILL finish it!