Of Thimble and Threat (trade paperback novel)

Description

This illustrated novel is part of the Jack the Ripper Victims Series. Each novel in the series is a standalone story.

Of Thimble and Threat by Alan M. Clark is a historical fiction novel inspired by the life of Catherine Eddowes, a woman believed to be the fourth victim of Jack the Ripper.

151 page trade paperback – IFD Publishing. Six illustrations by the author in the book.

The story provides a glimpse into a time when the industrial revolution had created not only prosperity, but also unimaginable suffering in what was the greatest city in the richest country in the world. The impoverished, and especially poor, single, middle-aged women were considered by many to have little worth. The murders of four women in the autumn of 1888 was only a symptom of the social ills in London.

The police report listed over fifty personal items found on Catherine Eddowes at the time of her death. Because she had spent the two nights before her death in the casual ward—an outdoor part of the workhouse system for the transient, the ill, or those known to be criminals to receive temporary, rudimentary shelter—she was likely sleeping with everything she owned on her person.

“Of Thimble and Threat is a wonderful little novel that conjures up the real Victorian London. No gleaming steampunk set-pieces are found within its pages, no storylines glorifying well-dressed gentlefolk with their brushed suits, parlor drama, and manicured carriages. Instead, Of Thimble and Threat unflinchingly depicts what life was like for the poor and forgettable in filthy post-Industrial Revolution London, a heartbreaking backdrop indeed for the story of Catherine Eddowes, the fourth victim of Jack the Ripper. Clark recreates Eddowes’ life in stunning detail, and the detail is not always pretty. The real Eddowes was not, of course, the plucky heroine of a novel, and to his credit, Clark does not try to make her into one. Instead he gives us a real person, a woman with flaws, whose wants that aren’t always wise or sensible; whose actions are not always admirable. Because Clark gives us such an honest portrait of her, her life, and inevitable death, are that much more tragic: When she dies, it is no stage death. Catherine Eddowes was real, and Clark masterfully brings her back—only to snatch her away again.”

—Molly Tanzer, Managing Editor of Lightspeed and Fantasy Magazine