"In this fascinating novel, one of the masters of impossible crime fiction takes on one of the greatest criminals of all time. Sticking scrupulously to the facts, Paul Halter explores the Jack the Ripper murders and offers his own theories about the identity of the monster, what drove him, and how he was able to vanish under the noses of the police during the spree of escalating horror which sent the citizens of fog-ridden London into paroxysms of fear in the autumn of 1888.. But the year before Saucy Jacky began his reign of terror, someone started to investigate an astonishing impossible murder committed in the country village of Blackfield nine years earlier. That, too, involved a monstrous murderer who slaughtered witnesses and vanished under the noses of his pursuers. Is there a connection with the Ripper cases which followed?" -- Publishers Weekly.