Sherlock Holmes and the Hunt for Jack the Ripper

Sherlock Holmes and the Hunt for Jack the Ripper

 

Given Sherlock Holmes’ prominence in late nineteenth-century literature, and the enduring specter of Jack the Ripper’s crimes in 1888, which to this day have not been solved to universal satisfaction, it’s not surprising that many authors and screenwriters have shown an interest in having Holmes investigate the case.  This has become a subgenre of Holmesian pastiches, often involving a double mystery.  First, who is Jack the Ripper; and second, why didn’t Holmes tell the world the solution?  Some of these crossover tales have a familiar figure from the Sherlock Holmes universe as the culprit, and others adopt a popular real-life theory of the case.

 

MX Publishing has released several stories on these themes.  Dean Turnbloom’s Sherlock Holmes & the Whitechapel Vampire adds a supernatural twist, with Jack the Ripper being a actual vampire, and Holmes is left vulnerable due to his skepticism.  The story is continued in Sherlock Holmes and the Body Snatchers, and the trilogy is rounded out by Sherlock Holmes & the Return of the Whitechapel Vampire.  The Last Confession of Sherlock Holmes by Kieran Lyne has Holmes returning from his supposed death at Reichenbach Falls to investigate a resurgence in the Ripper killings that may or may not be connected to Professor Moriarty, who could possibly be not as dead as believed.  Holmes finds himself partnering with Irene Adler at one point, and the conclusion to the case comes disturbingly close to home.  Margaret Walsh’s Sherlock Holmes and the Molly-Boy Murders centers on the hunt for a killer striking not long after Jack the Ripper’s reign of terror ends.  Mark Sohn’s Sherlock Holmes and the Whitechapel Murders has Holmes investigating the actual crimes, and Diane Gilbert Madsen’s The Conan Doyle Notes: The Secret of Jack the Ripperexplores if the famed author knew more about the case than he told the world.

 

A child-friendly example of this trend is the episode “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. McDuck” from the original animated series Ducktales.  In it, the works of Robert Louis Stevenson and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle are both parodied.  When Uncle Scrooge is sprayed with a chemical that transforms him into the world’s biggest spendthrift, the family travels to London to find the antidote.  There, they find an ally in Shedlock Jones, who is on the hunt for Professor Moody Doody, while the sneak thief Jack the Tripper is terrorizing London, leaving slippery objects around so people fall and are easy to rob.

 

Written and directed by Scott McQuaid, Pop Up Theatre’s Sherlock Holmes in Ripper Street is a forty-two minute radio play about the Ripper Murders, featuring the regular cast, a cameo appearance by Irene Adler, and a shocking solution.

 

In the world of computer games, Sherlock Holmes and the Serrated Scalpel  has Holmes investigating the brutal death of an actress.  Lestrade believes this to be Jack the Ripper’s work, but Holmes isn’t so sure, and he and Watson travel all over London, unearthing the truth.  The Serrated Scalpel has great nostalgia value for me, as I played it growing up, but could never get beyond an early part of the game.  I eventually lost the CD-ROM, then found it years later and wound up finishing the game in a marathon playing session.  The hidden object game The Lost Cases of Sherlock Holmes 2 also features a case involving the brutal murder of a man who is roundly condemned for his sensationalist attempts to make a quick pound when he opens the “Jack the Ripper Museum,” and claims to know the serial killer’s true identity.  The 2009 game Sherlock Holmes Versus Jack the Ripper centers around the investigation of the case, and players can take the roles of either Holmes or Watson.

 

A personal favorite of mine, the 1979 movie Murder by Decree stars Christopher Plummer and James Mason as Holmes and Watson, as they investigate the Jack the Ripper case, which has the potential to bring the British Government to its knees.

 

The first Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce Sherlock Holmes movie I ever saw, The Woman in Green, features hypnotism, blackmail, and “The Finger Murders” that are likely inspired by the Jack the Ripper crimes.  The Rathbone/Bruce radio episode “The Strange Case of the Murderer in Wax” includes another Ripperesque case, culminating at a standoff at sinister wax museum.

 

This is just a taste of the subgenre.  Lyndsay Faye’s 2009 novel Dust and Shadow: An Account of the Ripper Killings by Dr. John H. Watson is another prominent example.  Faye has published many Sherlockian pastiches in The Strand Magazine, which have been collected in The Whole Art of Detection.  Bernard Schaffer brings his own take on the case in Whitechapel: The Final Stand of Sherlock Holmes, as have Anna Elliott and Charles Veley in the Sherlock Holmes and Lucy James mystery The Return of the Ripper.  These are just samples of the vast subgenre of Holmes/Ripper mysteries, and the exclusion of any examples is not meant to imply any denigration of any works that are not mentioned.  Given the possibilities for imaginative minds, this subgenre is likely to continue for a very long time.

 

–Chris Chan

Chris Chan’s first book, Sherlock & Irene: The Secret Truth Behind “A Scandal in Bohemia” will be released on August 27^th from MX Publishing, and is available for sale at Amazon.com and the MX Publishing website.