Ripper Code

The Ripper Code is a fascinating combination of literary and conventional detective work, which is as original as it is enthralling. After showing that the official Ripper files contain little of forensic interest, the author approaches the subject of the killer's identity from an entirely different angle - the life and works of Oscar Wilde. He suggests that the Ripper was a `friend' of Oscar Wilde, and that Wilde dropped clear hints about this in several of his works, most notably The Picture of Dorian Gray, which he wrote in 1889, the year after the Ripper murders took place. The author also claims that Jack the Ripper was placed in an asylum after the last murder in order to keep secret a royal indiscretion, and that Marie Belloc Lowndes based her famous novel The Lodger on what she had learned about the Ripper from her friend Wilde. This paperback edition contains a brand-new chapter on Montague John Druitt, the police's prime suspect, in which the author explains the significance of his Rosetta Stone-like discovery that Druitt was barred from the prestigious Oxford Union, and uses that breakthrough to decipher the mysteries surrounding him which have defied students of this case since his name first came to light fifty years ago.