Just Finished Reading: People of Abandoned Character by Clare Whitfield (FP: 2020) [419pp] 

London, 1888. It was almost a dream come true. Susannah had secured her future with her marriage to up-and-coming young surgeon Thomas Lancaster. If only the clouds on the horizon would clear, she could be happy. But the honeymoon in Brighton is well and truly over. The new household is cold if not actively hostile to her presence and her new husband is no longer the loving man she married so recently. His mood has begun to change, sometimes aloof and at others frighteningly violent. But worse, much worse, are his unexplained absences he calls 'work'. But seeing clients should not involve staying away for days on end, nor coming home covered in blood not his own. Then there are the stories in the press, stories of women being murdered in the streets of Whitechapel, women mutilated in depraved ways. Slowly, reluctantly, Susannah begins to wonder, begins to suspect – could her mercurial husband be 'Jack the Ripper'? 

As soon as I saw the location and the date, I immediately knew what this novel was about, even before reading the rest of the blurb. The year 1888 is famous for the short spate of gruesome murders that have fascinated generations since then. This was a nice twist on that story that revolved around the wife of the potential mass killer and has an equally nice explanation of why the killing stopped. I'm sure that more than one woman living in London at that time suspected a husband, brother or father of the crimes that horrified and entranced the city at the time. Of course, it has been long suspected that 'Jack' had some medical training, so it made sense for the novels prime suspect (of Susannah rather than the police who honestly didn't have a clue who he was!) should be someone who was, in fact, being trained to cut people open. The sense of time and place was very strong here and very well done. I liked the way that Susannah became obsessed with the newspaper reports surrounding the murders and investigations which, no doubt, came from actual reports (although it doesn't say so in my paperback copy they certainly 'feel' authentic). As always, I have to highlight the characterisation throughout the book, which was very good especially Susannah who I liked a lot (although this was tarnished somewhat late on as we learnt more about her past). Other characters, even her horrible husband, were very well drawn and totally believable with their own credible backgrounds and motivations. Not a single eyebrow was raised in question throughout the novel. But... 

Despite being very well written from beginning to end I did have a few problems with this novel. It suffered from what I'm calling First Novel Syndrome (FNS). I can well understand the fear that an author's first novel will also be their last and, because of that, they want to get everything that they've imagined in there – be it plot, characters, observations and so on. If they're not going to get another chance to shine, then its ALL going in. That's the major problem I had here. There were several sub-plots and flashbacks that added little or nothing to the overall narrative except (probably) that they were part of the original imagining. A case in point is Susannah's journaling during the murders where she imagined the deaths of each victim in order to help her 'understand' what was happening – despite knowing nothing more than the press reports she read each day. Considering that the rest of the novel was purely from her PoV this was both jarring and honestly pointless. Another more minor niggle was when she was explaining something to a major sub-character which was almost word for word what we had already been reading in the novel. An 'explanation' that took 2-3 pages could very easily have been completed in 2-3 lines. That, I think, was just an example of bad/insufficient editing but still...  

Overall, this was a good (and often very good) read. If the editing had been a bit more aggressive and the 'side quests' removed or much reduced, it could have been a very good book indeed. I certainly haven't been put off reading her subsequent work as hopefully she's calmed down a bit and no longer feels the need to include all of her ideas along with the kitchen sink. Better than reasonable but could have been much better.

[Highest page count of the year so far: 419pp][+13pp]