Casebook: Jack the Ripper Conference 2022

[Ms Diddles]

You liked my presentation? Thank you!!

You might also like Kerrigan Byrne’s Fiona Mahoney series, about a friend of MJK’s who’s a crime scene cleaner in London in the year after the Ripper murders. There’s 2 books out so far.

Hi Linotte!

Yes, I thought your presentation was excellent.

It was a rather unusual way for me to spend the weekend but I thought all the talks were superb and they gave me much food for thought.

Many thanks for the above tip.

I will check out this series.

I'd not heard of it before and it sounds interesting.

[Dickere]

I wanted to check out last years conference but something came up and I was gutted to miss it.

As per the victims, very appropriate.

[Linotte]

Hi Linotte!

Yes, I thought your presentation was excellent.

It was a rather unusual way for me to spend the weekend but I thought all the talks were superb and they gave me much food for thought.

Many thanks for the above tip.

I will check out this series.

I'd not heard of it before and it sounds interesting.

No problem! She also writes romance and has a few series that are very good.

Byrne has a pretty solid audience, but she had to self-publish this series because the Big 5 publishers wouldn’t take it. “Your readers (mostly women) don’t want to read about JTR.” It’s been picked up by another romance author’s publishing company. But Byrne would have been querying for this book while Rubenhold was going after everything Ripper-related to promote The Five and trying to shut everyone else down so she had a monopoly in that area. I think publishers got skittish for awhile and a lot of really good authors got screwed because of this situation. But it ended up working out for the best for Byrne.

[Ms Diddles]

No problem! She also writes romance and has a few series that are very good.

Byrne has a pretty solid audience, but she had to self-publish this series because the Big 5 publishers wouldn’t take it. “Your readers (mostly women) don’t want to read about JTR.” It’s been picked up by another romance author’s publishing company. But Byrne would have been querying for this book while Rubenhold was going after everything Ripper-related to promote The Five and trying to shut everyone else down so she had a monopoly in that area. I think publishers got skittish for awhile and a lot of really good authors got screwed because of this situation. But it ended up working out for the best for Byrne.

Well, I'm glad that it all came good for Byrne in the end.

I had no idea that other JtR related wtiters were falling prey to "the Rubenhold effect".

It's scary that one author can monopolise the market like that.

From a strategic point of view HR has clearly played a blinder!

It's good to see that there's a bit of a push-back still happening though.

[dag]

I second Linotte’s praise for the Fiona Mahoney series of novels by Kerrigan Byrne. I reviewed the first title in the series – The Business of Blood – for Ripperologist #166 (March 2020): Here is my review:

“Fiona Mahoney is a crime scene cleaner. She deals with the offal left behind after violent death. Once the police have finished their work and the corpses have been carted away, in comes Fiona and her crew with their scrapers and scrubbing brushes and buckets of water. It’s grim, messy work, and Fiona still has nightmares about the time she cleaned up after 13 Miller’s Court, a job made even worse because Mary Kelly was her childhood best friend. That night she made a vow: -- ‘As I’d scooped ruined bits of her into the very pail I now gripped in my hand, I’d promised that I would avenge her death. That I wouldn’t rest until I uncovered the identity of Jack the Ripper and saw to it that justice was done.’

“Two years later, Fiona is called out to another clean-up job on Dorset Street. This time the victim is male, but the style of mutilation is horribly familiar. Jack the Ripper is back, it seems. A tantalising clue at the crime scene propels Fiona into a new area of enquiry for her murdered friend... Yet there are complications: Fiona has a murky history as a body snatcher for Dr Phillips, and her activities are beginning to attract notice. Has she drawn the attention of a killer? Who exactly is the hunter and who is the prey?

“Kerrigan Byrne is a writer of mainly historical romance fiction. Her books are full of maidens falling in love with scoundrels, and black-hearted men on the wrong side of the law. This theme is present to some extent in the novel under review, with its gallery of dangerous and mysterious male characters ‒ the sinister but alluring Police Inspector Croft, the Jewish East End gangster boss known as The Hammer, his North American Indian assassin Mr Night Horse. And lurking in the shadows, surpassing them all, the Whitechapel fiend.

“The Business of Blood is alive with ‘the noises of grief, and things that are wet’. Dr Bond has a voice ‘as cool and smooth as the steel table upon which the corpse was splayed before us.’ With a strong female lead and a taut, suspenseful plot, this is a superior murder mystery thriller that explores justice and revenge and adds another powerful layer of story to the mythology of Jack the Ripper. It upsets the stomach and it disturbs the mind. Recommended.”

Unfortunately, I missed most of the Conference, but I managed to tune in for the talk by Amy Sturgis, which I thought was fantastic. She covered many of the classic, foundational Ripper tales, but also several contemporary works written in the last decade or so. It’s great to see the organisers reaching out to such a variety of different speakers.

[Linotte]

Well, I'm glad that it all came good for Byrne in the end.

I had no idea that other JtR related wtiters were falling prey to "the Rubenhold effect".

It's scary that one author can monopolise the market like that.

From a strategic point of view HR has clearly played a blinder!

It's good to see that there's a bit of a push-back still happening though.

Oh, I know. I don’t think it was some big plan she had, though; she was just playing whack-a-mole and going after whatever and whoever she could and promote using controversy marketing and I think publishers just wanted to avoid it, especially during COVID. And it didn’t help that her agents and her editor at the publisher were acting like her conduct was cute and egging her on, because that meant selling more books and more money for them. Luckily, she seems to have lost quite a bit of momentum, due to the ugliness that came with S1 of the podcast, her cringeworthy appearance on Jensen & Holes, her stakeholders likely telling her to stop stirring stuff up, and some other moments of her own bad judgment when it comes to social media posts. But no one should have that much power and influence, especially if they use it to punch down on other people.

[Ms Diddles]

Hi jmenges / all,

I was just wondering if there was going to be a 2023 online conference this October?

I don't want to sound presumptuous, but was just arranging various social things for autumn and would keep the weekend free if so.

Thanks!

[jmenges]

Hi!
Sorry...There won't be a 2023 conference.
I've been too busy to organize it.
I do hope to release the 2023 East End Conference talks, which would have too closely coincided with a Casebook online conference this year-had we held one.
Its possible that next year will be better. We'll see.

JM

[Ms Diddles]

Hi!
Sorry...There won't be a 2023 conference.
I've been too busy to organize it.
I do hope to release the 2023 East End Conference talks, which would have too closely coincided with a Casebook online conference this year-had we held one.
Its possible that next year will be better. We'll see.

JM

OK!

Thanks for getting back to me, Jon!