Scarlet Autumn: The Crimes and Seasons of Jack the Ripper
He wasn't the top-hatted gent of legend. But he must have known that he'd stand out in that gauche deerstalker hat. It's been said he killed prostitutes. But that is not true. Even to prostitutes, his victims were dregs. They were smelly hags winking over toothless smiles. He killed what a haughty mind would deem the expendable.     Jack the Ripper seemed a middle-class clerk putting on airs, and nothing more. But he was actually a complex, bizarre paradox. Killing in public was already risky, but the misplaced country gentleman's hat was an unnecessary risk. What was his game? Whatever it was, he succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. It is not the careful false clues that he left that saved him. Not even he could foresee that a legend would quickly arise that would forever eclipse him and his bloody autumn.     For 125 years folklore has protected him. But the actual details and the true image of the Ripper are reborn in SCARLET AUTUMN. The reader is translated back to Victorian London's moody slum of Whitechapel to vividly relive that frightening Fall of 1888.The reader will walk the streets, sit at the inquests, and examine every clue at the crime scenes. And most importantly, they will finally see Jack the Ripper as he really was. SCARLET AUTUMNis not the account of another dubious suspect. As a concise biography of the crime spree, it is the account by which all suspects must be judged.