Martin H. Greenberg, Charles G. Waugh and Frank D. McSherry. Jr. (eds.) - Red Jack (Daw, 1988)
J. K. Potter
Harlan Ellison - The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World
Ray Russell - Sagittarius
Vincent McConnor - The Whitechapel Wantons
Ellery Queen - A Study in Terror
Marie Belloc Lowndes - The Lodger
William F. Nolan - The Final Stone
Ramsey Campbell - Jack's Little Friend
Robert Bloch - Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper Red Jack concerns itself with collecting the "best" Ripper stories into one volume, and disappointingly, we already have four of the eight stories in Michel Parry's groundbreaking
Jack The Knife (Mayflower, 1975). Fortunately, the inclusion of Ray Russell's epic - a sequel of sorts to
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - goes some way toward making up for all the duplication, as does the Ellery Queen movie tie-in. Despite being all over the place when it comes to outlining the known "facts" about the murders, William F. Nolan's story is enjoyably bonkers: Jack is transported across the ocean as part of London Bridge - into which he was walled-up alive in 1888 - and is soon out gallivanting in Arizona. The Vincent McConnor sees a group of prostitutes banding together for the single purpose of getting rid of the Whitechapel fiend before he gets rid of them.
Includes:
Mrs. Marie Belloc Lowdnes - The Lodger:
i can't think why he wants to go out in such weather. He did it in last week's fog, too ... 'twould be a very bad thing for us if anything happened to him. The lodger's the first bit of luck we've had for a very long time." That's Mr. Bunting talking, and the stroke of good fortune he's discussing with second wife Ellen is the self-styled "man of science", Mr. Sleuth who moved into their Marylebone home on December 29th at a time when they were too broke to carry on. An easy date to remember as that was also when the first of the "'Orrible murders in Whitechapel" made the headlines.
Mr. Sleuth has eccentric ways. He turns around the pictures and photo's in the sitting room so that they face the wall because "those women's eyes follow me about.": he fanatically scrutinises the Bible for the worst of the anti-women references: he conducts experiments in his room at ungodly hours, experiments that require extreme heat.
Another of the murders, this time in Marylebone. Mrs. Bunting is far from sympathetic - "it serves that sort of hussy right" - but the killing disturbs her deeply because she already has her suspicions. To make matters worse, Bunting's daughter, Daisy, is coming to spend her eighteenth birthday with them. She arrives in London just as two more mutilated corpses are discovered in Kings Cross ...
The murders take place off the page, but this is among the more effective Ripper stories for the sheer suspense of the thing as Sleuth invites Daisy along with him to Madame Tussauds for a birthday treat. By now the Buntings are certain that he is the Ripper but do nothing to prevent her leaving with him. Greed has much to do with it, but Ellen Bunting doesn't seem in the least unsympathetic to the madman's cause and has she developed some kind of hideous crush on him?
If only the
Chamber of Horrors was half as frightening these days.
Ray Russell - Sagittarius: In 1909, the two finest actors in Paris were the classical Sellig and his polar opposite Laval, a monstrous performer at the Grand Guignol. Narrator Earl Terrence Glencannon is intrigued by both, the one handsome and charming, the other every bit as ghastly as the Bluebeard role he has made his own (he doesn't even use make-up). When Clothilde, a pretty good-time girl on the theatre fringes is found butchered in the manner of a Ripper victim, the terrible secret linking the two actors is gradually revealed. Glencannon theorises that the killer is none other than the son of Mr. Hyde, modelling himself on Gilles de Rais (!).
Vincent McConnor - The Whitechapel Wantons: Prostitute Violette was the last person to see her friend Polly Nichols alive. A man had approached them both in an alley off Swallow Court and Polly had gone with him ... to be slaughtered. Violette wants revenge and, together with Cora at
The Black Swan, she sets in motion her plan to kill Jack the Ripper and dump his body in the Thames.
*****
I once compiled a list of uncollected Ripper short stories, but do you think I can find it?
Robert Arthur had one called
The Knife, and somebody -
Anthony Butcher perhaps? - had him tried before the Court of Hell, his fellow monsters being the only ones capable of judging him.
Robert Bloch penned
A Most Unusual Murder, but far better was his loose sequel to, the surely over-rated,
Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper,
A Toy For Juliette: Juliette, so named after de Sade's heroine due to her similar capacity for inflicting torture, sits in her boudoir awaiting the arrival of the new plaything her Grandfather is procuring for her via his brilliant invention, 'The Trander' (it serves the same function as the Transporter on
The Starship Enterprise). By this means he's already attained for her an Iron Maiden, Rack, dissecting table and set of stocks, plus the entire crew of
The Marie Celeste. Her latest gift? A Victorian gent from the foggy streets of Whitechapel, 1888 ...
