They All Love Jack: Busting the Ripper
Written by Bruce Robinson
Narrated by Bruce Robinson and Phil Fox
3.5/5
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About this audiobook
A book like no other – the tale of a gripping quest to discover the identity of history’s most notorious murderer and a literary high-wire act from the legendary writer and director of Withnail and I.
For over a hundred years, ‘the mystery of Jack the Ripper’ has been a source of unparalleled fascination and horror, spawning an army of obsessive theorists, and endless volumes purporting finally to reveal the identity of the brutal murderer who terrorised Victorian England.
But what if there was never really any ‘mystery’ at all? What if the Ripper was always hiding in plain sight, deliberately leaving a trail of clues to his identity for anyone who cared to look, while cynically mocking those who were supposedly attempting to bring him to justice?
In THEY ALL LOVE JACK, the award-winning film director and screenwriter Bruce Robinson exposes the cover-up that enabled one of history’s most notorious serial killers to remain at large. More than twelve years in the writing, this is much more than a radical reinterpretation of the Jack the Ripper legend, and an enthralling hunt for the killer. A literary high-wire act reminiscent of Tom Wolfe or Hunter S. Thompson, it is an expressionistic journey through the cesspools of late-Victorian society, a phantasmagoria of highly placed villains, hypocrites and institutionalised corruption.
Polemic, forensic investigation, panoramic portrait of an age, underpinned by deep scholarship and delivered in Robinson’s inimitably vivid and scabrous prose, THEY ALL LOVE JACK is an absolutely riveting and unique book, demolishing the theories of generations of self-appointed experts – the so-called ‘Ripperologists’ – to make clear, at last, who really did it; and more importantly, how he managed to get away with it for so long.
Bruce Robinson
Bruce Robinson is the director and screenwriter of Withnail and I, How to Get Ahead in Advertising, Jennifer 8 and The Rum Diary. He has also written the screenplays for The Killing Fields, Shadow Makers (released in the US as Fat Man and Little Boy), Return to Paradise and In Dreams. He is the author of The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman and Paranoia in the Launderette, and of two books for children, The Obvious Elephant and Harold and the Duck, both illustrated by Sophie Windham.
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Reviews for They All Love Jack
37 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Another book where the author picks a suspect and then cherry picks facts, info and evidence to back it up along with some bizarre far fetched theories that Stephen Knight and Patricia Cornwell would be proud of. Anything that goes against the suspect is either ignored or thrown out the window, also a lot of undesirable information is just not even mentioned. All the while throwing insults at people who have an interest in the Ripper case while writing a book about the Ripper. Not the first book to do this and probably not the last. Slightly entertaining the lengths the author reaches to make his case if nothing else.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Excellent research! I'm convinced! Read book too when first published, will read again! Certainly helps to listen to audio, great narration.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I bought this because I heard that it was viscerally angry in its refutation of the myth of Jack the Ripper. I think there needs to be more anger in history, especially anger directed against the disgusting and inhuman, and against corruption in high places. History written for an academic audience is often dry and inaccessible, while popular history sometimes lacks rigour. This book combines the rigour of academic research with the accessibility and humanity of popular history.I didn't know that I was all that interested in Jack the Ripper until I started reading this book. Because of what it involves, the reason behind Robinson researching the story isn't revealed until a fifth of the way into the book. His reason is interesting but not vital to the passion he has for getting to the truth behind the mystery being infectious. His historian as raconteur style helped, but this is a pacey, gripping read regardless of Robinson's voice roaring out in incredulity at you. There were times when what Robinson was describing was so farcical that I could imagine it being made into a very entertaining satirical film.This is one of the best books I have ever read. It made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me boil with rage, but most of all it consolidated things I have long held to be true into a coherent appraisal of the society we live in.