Horror Review: Ripper by Michael Slade (1994, Signet Books)

Headhunter, Ghoul, and Cutthroat are all fine books in the series, and I heartily recommend them to anyone who enjoys a level of world-building and history lessons which exceed the overall body count of your horror-whodunnits, but as incredible as Slade's first three publications are, they've got nothing on Ripper. If you've only got room for one 'Special X' novel on your straining shelves, Ripper is the one you want there.

There are, of course, references to previous Slade novels here. The Mounties refer to prior cases, mainly Cutthroat although Ghoul and Headhunter each get their nods. There are some minor nods and asides you won't catch, and the impact of certain scenes will be blunted, if you've not read the previous books but the overall story stands alone and does so well despite juggling the protagonists of the earlier stories. Even with three major story threads running through this thriller, Slade has zero problems keeping the pace burning as the scenes swap between Robert DeClercq's lower-key role as the coordinator of his team, Nick Craven's work gathering evidence and interviewing the people who can best make sense of the motives behind the crimes, and Zinc Chandler's attempt to prove he's still got what it takes to be a cop after what went down on his trip to Hong Kong five years ago (chronicled in Cutthroat).

Slade's no slouch when it comes to spilling blood as every reader should be aware, but the victims in Ripper are on the receiving end of some truly spectacular, 'not-the-end-I'd-wish-for' scenarios. From having one's head ritually skinned and scalped to being on the receiving end of an airborne delivery of face-melting acid; from having one's intestines forcibly removed via brute suction to having one's head slowly pulped in a vise one crank-turn at a time: if you're looking to compile a top however many list of "worst ways to expire", Ripper will fill a dozen entries before you turn the final page.

*Ripper* also throws a ton of historical fact the reader's way, Slade's trademark calling card. Police procedural stuff is lighter in this book than the earlier novels, but you'll still get background on everything from Jack the Ripper to Aleister Crowley, 'locked room' mysteries to the tarot, John Dickson Carr to Ellery Queen. Slade's books always end with a bibliography, just in case the info dumps don't tell you everything you wanted to know about a given subject raised by one or more characters, so you'll have even more fodder for your 'to be read' pile if you want it.

Slade devotes a truly awe-inspiring amount of time poring over both the facts and mythology behind Jack the Ripper, and in doing so takes great pains to explain a potential 'why' behind the original Ripper murders that I'd never read before. Granted, I'm no, uh, Ripper-ologist, but I consider myself reasonably informed on the basic facts of the case. Slade goes in a completely new direction with his theory, tying it into his fictional-but-based-on-stuff-he's-seen modern-day depictions of low-lifes and criminal scum, and somehow makes it all work. No, not just work, but also make a perversely scary amount of sense. I'm not about to say he's solved the murders or anything, but like Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell did with From Hell, he's certainly given us some new possibilities to consider. Sure, much of it revolves around the 'Satanic Panic' so prevalent in the 80's and early 90's, but looking at it with the benefit of two decades' hindsight just makes it that much more enjoyable in my opinion.

If that was all there was to it, Ripper would still be worth reading, but what truly earns it my highest praise is Zinc Chandler's part of the story. Since he's been out of action after suffering serious head trauma in Cutthroat, Chandler's been looking for an 'in' that will let him prove (to the RCMP, but more to himself) that he has what it takes to still be a cop. DeClercq, sensing a way to ease him back into the action without just dropping him back on the streets, recruits him for a relatively easy assignment: he's to play Inspector against a dozen hardcore mystery writers who are staging their own live-action scenario for the chance to earn a $50,000 prize. Chandler's role is to see if his talent as a cop makes him better equipped for solving a mystery than those who create them for a living. This is such a bloody brilliant idea I'd read an entire book devoted to nothing but this scenario alone; luckily with Slade, I got even more than that to entertain me.

What should be a quiet, simple weekend getaway of mental stimulation and jovial competition turns into Slade's own homage to Christie's untouchable classic, Ten Little Indians, as the guests discover the mansion has been fitted with all manner of vicious, violent, surprising and horrible death traps. The planes which dropped them on the island have long since departed, the power is out, the phones don't work, and a storm ensures there's no possibility of rescue either by boat or air. As casualties begin to mount, Chandler comes to the cold realization the killer has to be among them--the only question is whether or not he can solve the mystery before the party of fourteen is whittled down to a party of none.

This part alone is worth the price of admission, with Slade dispatching secondary characters in gleefully sadistic ways, all the while taunting both Chandler and the reader with a never-ending series of conundrums and riddles. How do you fire a crossbow without your finger on the trigger? How do you cut a man's throat in the middle of an empty room? Read for yourself--I wouldn't spoil this one even if you paid me. The takeaway from all this is: Ripper's a gas from start to finish. Slade's love/hate letter to the finest mystery scribes of all time is blanched deep red with his penchant for bloodletting.

Favorite Scene:

One of the authors assembled on the island explains he writes "horror-whodunnits", a very niche market: the bloodier bits turn off the traditional mystery fans, while the mystery aspects don't do much to whet the typical horror fan's appetite. The man's referring to his own publications, but he just as easily could have been Slade, sneaking in a quick fourth-wall breaker about his own writing. Ripper rocks, and remains my favorite Slade-istic fantasy to this day.

Five "I Did Not See That One Coming!" declarations out of five. Whether you read it for new insight into the Jack the Ripper slayings of the late 1800's, use it as a primer to get started reading locked room mysteries, or just want your typical wanton brutality laced with a heavy dose of black magic, drugs, tattooed fiends, and devil worship, you're going to like what you see. Ripper simply kicks all of the ass, end of story.