Sarah Rayne is Ripping off the Villain

Sarah Rayne is the author of  three previous Phineas Fox mysteries, Death Notes, Chord of Evil and Song of the Damned; six haunted house mysteries featuring Michael Flint and Nell West, and several novels of psychological suspense.  She lives in Staffordshire, England.
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Ripping off the Villain

 
It’s possibly fair to say that no mass-murderer has left quite such a wealth of dark legends as the man that nineteenth-century England called the Whitechapel Murderer, Leather Apron…    The man the world came to know as Jack the Ripper.

When I started to write Music Macabre, the fourth outing for music researcher and historian Phineas Fox, I didn’t really intend Jack to be a major player.  Phineas, happily pursuing scholarly research into the life of Franz Lizst, was meant to unexpectedly come upon a fragment of music – a song – that seemed to have links back to the Ripper’s reign.

But somehow – very gradually and almost without my realising it – Jack got into the story in a far stronger and much more insistent way than I had bargained for.  He was present in every plot twist, he influenced characters’ motives and directed their actions – it was as if he peered out of every dark shadow surrounding the nineteenth century players, and reached out to the present-day through them.

Even today, the truth about Jack’s identity and his eventual fate remain the subject of disussion and speculation.  Films have been made about him, books have been written about him, and the theories posed as to his motives and his identity range from the sensible and near-credible to the outright bizarre and the wildly fantastical.  He has, severally, been credited with being a person of some prominence – a leading doctor or surgeon – a member of the police force, or the government – a famous painter – a leading Freemason.  Some theories connect him to royalty – even to having been royal himself.  

Whoever he was, inevitably I faced the problem of what to do with him in the closing chapters.  Generally, a villain does have to be given his or her just deserts in the final chapter.  It’s not exactly a convention that has to be observed, but it’s expected.  Even if he/she isn’t tried and sentenced in the conventional manner, some kind of fate has to descend. This might cheat an author of writing a taut courtroom/prison cell scene, but it does open up a beautiful range of dramatic possibilities, including sending the culprit tumbling over the Reichenbach Falls, being submerged beneath the Paris Opera House, spontaneously combusting like Krook in Bleak House, or falling into the jaws of a crocodile as Captain Hook memorably did in Peter Pan. 

But how do you deal out a fate to Jack the Ripper?  Particularly when the theories and suggestions as to what happened to him and why his killing spree stopped are almost as thick on the ground as the speculations as to his identity. 

He died…   He fled to an unnamed country…  He fell into the Thames and drowned…   He was hauled off to a lunacy asylum, either because he had not been recognised for what he was, or because he had been recognised, but was too well-known a figure to stand trial. 

Could you even let him go, and allow yourself the fun of allotting to him one of the hammy Hammer finale lines?  Fu Manchu, in the last reel of most of the film versions of Sax Rohmer’s books, comes to mind here – he had the way of raising an elegant hand, and portentously announcing that, ‘The world will hear from me again.’

And, as far as anyone knows, the world never did hear from Jack the Ripper again.  His legacy remains, though – it still reaches into the present, and it’s that dark legacy that brought about the writing of Music Macabre. 

Music Macabre (A Phineas Fox Mystery) by Sarah Rayne

Researching a biography of the composer Franz Liszt, Phineas Fox uncovers evidence of a brutal murder - and finds his own life in danger.

​Music researcher Phineas Fox has been enjoying his latest commission, gathering background material for a biography of Franz Liszt. But although he has - as anticipated - uncovered plenty of scandal in the 19th century composer's past, matters take a decidedly unexpected turn when his investigations lead to Linklighters, a newly-opened Soho restaurant built on the site of an old Victorian music hall, and unearth evidence of a possible murder involving the notorious music hall performer known as Scaramel.
Just what was Liszt's connection to Scaramel ... and, through her, to the infamous Victorian serial killer Jack the Ripper? As he delves further, Phin's enquiries uncover clues to a fascinating and extraordinary story - and plunge his own life into jeopardy.

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