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** This is an archived, static copy of the Casebook messages boards dating from 1998 to 2003. These threads cannot be replied to here. If you want to participate in our current forums please go to https://forum.casebook.org **
Out of Time (Crawford)
Casebook Message Boards: Ripper Media: Specific Titles:
Fiction :
Out of Time (Crawford)
Author: Robert Crawford
Thursday, 19 November 1998 - 08:02 pm |        | In belated response to Michael Wolverton's wistful longing for a good JTR novel that uses the most recent information, I think that I may have the solution (tho not the "final solution," as it *is* fiction!).
I've written a sci-fi novel called OUT OF TIME that has landed me an agent, Kimberley Cameron of the Reece Halsey Agency N. in Tiburon, CA.
It makes use of the "Collars and Cuffs" conspiracy w/o actually implicating the Prince as a suspect, as Pamela West had done in her finely and beautifully written, YOURS TRULY: JACK THE RIPPER. It, instead, makes use of the imminent Cleveland St. bust of 1889, orchestrated by Fred Abberline, as the crux of the conspiracy that involves the Commissioner of S.Y. (Sir Charles Warren), James Monro, Lord Mayor Sir James Whitehead, Prime Minister Salibury, and even the Queen herself. Victoria naively feels, after learning of her little boy's indiscretions, that allowing Jack to run amok in the streets of Whitechapel will scare the whores out of England just like St. Patrick supposedly did with the snakes in Ireland.
OUT OF TIME is both a character *and* event-driven novel that centers around the protagonist, a mid 21st century cop who has been obsessed with JTR all his life. When he discovers that Jack may be his partner and that his temporal image is trapped in 1888 and throwing the continuum out of whack, he goes back to 1888 and that's where the fun begins!
In writing this novel, I'd exhaustively researched the Ripper case, the spine of my research being Donald Rumbelow's CASEBOOK (the revised 1990 Berkley edition). Other theories had been tested and weighed, including the Maybrick diary (which I'd discredited in my novel out of narrative convenience). If I'd learned anything in this first novel, it was that a much better JTR novel could be written if the fictional narrative *conformed* to the facts, instead of vice versa.
Jamie Raab of Warner Books, who had rejected the novel last January, still said that it was "a lightning fast read" and "masterfully evoked Victorian London." At least I know that I'd done my research. Her reason for rejecting OUT OF TIME?
She felt that the publishing industry had already been inundated with enough literature on JTR and couldn't support another theory! Obviously, she doesn't know that my novel is a *novel* and doesn't advance a creditable theory inasfar as serious scholarship is concerned. If only she knew how many books about Jack came out last year alone and the year before that, and that Anthony Hopkins himself is playing Maybrick in an upcoming movie based on the DIARY! Too many theories?! Ms. Raab, the game is barely afoot!
Details on the progress on my novel will be forthcoming as they come in from my agent. |
Author: Urs
Sunday, 11 April 1999 - 10:38 pm | | To Robert Crawford
Best of luck with your book. I hope you find
a publisher soon.
I am just at the early stages of research for my
novel. Have you any tips?
Urs. |
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