A new anthology from Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler, centered around the historical enigma whose name has become synonymous with fear: Jack the Ripper.
Of all the real-life serial killers whose gruesome deeds have splashed across headlines throughout human history, few have reached the near-mythical status of Jack the Ripper. Terrorizing the world with a rash of violent murders in London s East End in the fall of 1888, Saucy Jack seemed to vanish just as quickly, leaving future generations to speculate upon the Ripper's identity and whereabouts and living on in some of the most spectacularly unnerving fiction and nonfiction ever written. Collected here, for the first time ever, are 41 tales featuring the infamous slasher, from classics by Marie Belloc-Lowndes, Robert Bloch, and Ellery Queen to never-before-seen stories by contemporary masters Jeffery Deaver, Loren D. Estleman, Lyndsay Faye, and many more. Also featured in this volume are essential true-crime artifacts of Jack the Ripper lore, including genuine witness statements, autopsy reports, contemporary news articles, and astonishing theories from the world s foremost Ripperologists as is only proper for a case that is truly as chilling as fiction."