The Bank Holiday Murders by Tom Wescott (2014)

[Qlder]

Hello Barnaby

Yes, he was a peculiar old bean. His rabid anti-Catholicism must have added an interesting twist to his job overseeing lodging houses overflowing with Irish.
I do trust the fairly extensive search done by contributors to Casebook which has shown no family link between the young man and the policeman, which makes it all the more curious as to why MM links them.

Regardless of the details of who exactly did what, I do think that the general outline of the proprietors blackmailing a senior policeman is worth a scratch of the head and even a pensive stroke of the beard.

[Barnaby]

I admit I need to learn more about him. It is interesting as to the timing of his suicide. It's too bad he wasn't younger or he might be a viable suspect.

[bladen7273.]

Hey Tom

Finally got your book ordered. I can't wait to read it.

[Cogidubnus]

Hey Tom

Finally got your book ordered. I can't wait to read it.

You'll not regret it...if for nothing other than a rare lesson in how to tease out the meagre evidence and draw provisional conclusions from incomplete data...

All the best

Dave

[Tom_Wescott]

Hey Tom

Finally got your book ordered. I can't wait to read it.

That's awesome, Bladen. Thanks for bothering. I hope you enjoy it. By the way, right now I have it set on Amazon so that anyone who bought the paperback can get the Kindle version for free. You don't have to have a Kindle machine to do that. You can read it on your computer screen, iPad, or cell phone, or just download to use later when you eventually get a Kindle (which you will. LOL).

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[bladen7273.]

That's awesome, Bladen. Thanks for bothering. I hope you enjoy it. By the way, right now I have it set on Amazon so that anyone who bought the paperback can get the Kindle version for free. You don't have to have a Kindle machine to do that. You can read it on your computer screen, iPad, or cell phone, or just download to use later when you eventually get a Kindle (which you will. LOL).

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

That's cool. I'll check it out. I appreciate it Tom.

[Tom_Wescott]

Correction

I just saw the reply from Amazon. Apparently the 'Matchbook' program is currently only available through Amazon.com and not .co.uk. I had no idea about that. Virtually everything else is good through both and it's the other Amazon affiliates who get left out. I apologize for the confusion. But this means that anyone who purchased the paperback edition of The Bank Holiday Murders specifically through Amazon.com can go and get the Kindle edition at no charge.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Scott Nelson]

What does this do for the spirit of John Satchell?

[Tom_Wescott]

What does this do for the spirit of John Satchell?

It reminds him of the glory days of his youth before he found himself at the heart of an Irish proto-mafia.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[mklhawley]

It's on my list Tom! Congratulations!

Sincerely,

Mike

[Tom_Wescott]

It's on my list Tom! Congratulations!

Sincerely,

Mike

Thanks, Mike. A couple of days ago I had the best selling Ripper book of the year. Now I have the second best-selling. Come November and the release of Neil Bell's book, I'll be in third. Could be worse, I suppose. I still like my title the best.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[mklhawley]

You can 'Bank' on that!

[Tom_Wescott]

You can 'Bank' on that!

Yep, and all that Bank should pay for a nice Holiday!

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Henry Flower]

Mr Wescott,

Finished your book yesterday evening - having started it at lunchtime.

Changed the way I view the murders. Can't say that about many Ripper books. Other books have offered interesting new facts or filled in blanks, but this one actually changed the way I look at the world in which the murders took place, which is some achievement given how jaded and tired I had become of the whole Ripper tale being retold and repackaged endlessly, in increasingly mind-numbing academic detail.

What an incestuous, nasty little world it was. What a vile little clique those people were. The Pearly Poll angle was remarkable and really challenging. I'm sure you're onto something significant and I hope we get to read more about it in a more extended text.

But as I said in my review: the title led me to believe that the bank holiday angle was going to be really revealing and significant - but that aspect of things seemed to me to fade away somewhat without ever being developed. Perhaps that expectation was a result of having read too many suspect-based books, where such threads are always followed-through and hammered to death in service of a theory. Maybe it's a virtue that you didn't labour that point, just as you didn't even mention Jack the Ripper in your title. Did your publishers try to insist, can I ask, or were they pleased to go with a more intriguing title?

Congratulations and thank you - a remarkable piece of research, honestly presented and finely written. It deserves every success.

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi Henry, thank you for taking the time to post this. I was thrilled when I saw your review on Amazon and read it allowed to those present. I self-published the book, so the title was all my doing. It was originally the title of a chapter in a different book (which I discuss in my introduction). When I decided to make this a book, I liked Bank Holiday Murders as a title. I intentionally wanted to avoid a title with the name 'Jack the Ripper' in it for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being that these early murders are not typically ascribed to the Ripper. But also because I thought that without that name in the title, the book would be taken more seriously and would reach a crowd outside of the Ripper, with the book still finding an audience in the Ripper community. Turned out I was correct. Since the vast majority of the book centers around the murders of Tabram and Smith, I didn't see the title as too much of a stretch.

As for the success of the book, it's far exceeded my expectations. In the last couple of months my Amazon.co.uk sales have really taken off. Before that, I was selling a lot in America. I thought that was odd. But at this moment my kindle edition is number 6 for serial killers at .co.uk and my paperback is #16. I'm regularly in the top 25, but this might be the first time that I'm in the top 20 twice at the same time.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott