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Worlds Without End Blog

WoGF Review: Mayhem by Sarah Pinborough Posted at 8:59 AM by Steff S.

MMOGC

WWEnd Women of Genre Fiction Reading ChallengeSteff S. (MMOGC), is an avid reader with an eclectic taste in books. While just about anything can catch her eye, she has a particular soft spot for fantasy and science fiction, and especially loves space operas and stories with interesting magic systems. Besides reading, she enjoys adventuring in the virtual words of MMORPGs, and first started blogging about games before branching out to contribute her book reviews at The BiblioSanctum with her friends.


MayhemInterestingly enough, well before this book came into my life, I’d happened to be browsing through the many publishing-related newsletters in my email inbox one day when a deliciously creepy animated gif banner in one of them caught my eye. In fact, it was an announcement for this very title, bearing the tag line:

“Jack the Ripper is terrorizing London. Now a new killer is stalking the streets, the victims’ bodies are dismembered and their heads are missing…the killer likes to keep them.”

It gets even more intriguing than that. The book’s blurb also describes it as a supernatural thriller, and given my penchant for historical horror novels (particularly those featuring a paranormal angle) I just couldn’t resist. So you can imagine my excitement when I received Mayhem for review from Jo Fletcher Books, and remembering that banner with its promise of a hunt for a serial killer in Victorian London, I needed little convincing to start this right away.

Still, Mayhem isn’t really a story about Jack the Ripper. Between 1888 and 1891 there were a series of murders in or around the Whitechapel area, and the modus operandi of some of these were different enough that investigators theorized that they could have been committed by another person other than Jack. The idea of a separate “Torso Killer” in these “Thames Mysteries” is what forms the basis for this book, and in Sarah Pinborough‘s version of the events, he takes his victims’ heads as trophies.

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WoGF Review: Mayhem by Sarah Pinborough Posted at 8:00 AM by Pat Doherty

Patremagne

WWEnd Grand Master Reading ChallengeBesides having been brought up watching Star Wars as well as Lord of the Rings later on, Pat Doherty (Patremagne) has been a science fiction/fantasy fan in literature since the age of 15 when he picked up a Dragonlance novel.  He is now a hopeless addict to reading and getting lost in new worlds. When not reading, Pat can be found playing and watching sports, primarily the Boston Bruins, and posting reviews and other ramblings on his blog, A Bitter Draft.


MayhemJo Fletcher Books is publisher to many good authors, including Tom Pollock, Snorri Kristjansson, and one Sarah Pinborough. Sarah is author of many dark stories, including her Dog Faced Gods horror series, as well as rewritten fairy tales, one being Poison (Snow White) and another being Beauty (Sleeping Beauty). I’ve yet to read any of her other work, so Mayhem was a first for me in a few ways. Prior to reading it, I hadn’t really read any novels that could be categorized under mystery or crime; I’d read some with elements of each, but never something strictly one or the other.

Two things drew me to Mayhem. First, there was the cover – exceptionally elegant and very fitting of the 19th century tale that is told. Second, Jack the Ripper. If for some reason you are unaware of who he was, Jack was a serial killer in late 19th century London who targeted female prostitutes and murdered them in brutal ways. He killed at least five women, likely more, but get this – he was never caught. This anonymity led to widespread terror throughout the area for years to come. Mayhem is not a story of Jack, though, but one of a new killer, dubbed by some as The Thames Killer and as The Torso Killer by others. Though there are similarities between Jack’s killings and those of the newcomer, primarily that they both target women, the protagonist, Dr. Thomas Bond, knows that there is indeed a second killer in the London slums who keeps his victims’ heads as trophies.

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