Book details of 'Ripper'

Title	Ripper
Author(s)	Michael Slade
ISBN	0451177029
Language	English
Published	June 1994
Publisher	Signet

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Reviewer Rob Slade wrote:
I did not expect Michael Slade to make it into this series. Despite the fact that "he" shares two of my names and my home town, I feel no real kinship with what is, after all, the pseudonym of two Vancouver lawyers. There is also the fact that "Michael Slade" specializes in horror, which has never been high on my "must read" list. I must admit that, having read one of "his" books out of random curiosity, I quite enjoyed it. While the criminal activities are not merely gruesome but positively twisted, at least there is some research and not a little imagination involved. The characterizations are full and realistic, even down to the details of petty rivalries. The plots are delightfully convoluted, with entire shoals of scarlet herring, but almost scrupulously fair to the reader. What gets the book into this series, as with most fictional entries, is a mistake. The plot hinges on the belief of a modern satanist group that the murders of Jack the Ripper were part of an occult ritual. Plotting the four "canonical" murders; those which were, without doubt, committed by the same person; it is determined that they form a cross shape. With some quick calculations, detailed in the text, we find that the odds against this happening are 15,249,024 to one. Obviously, this can't be random! Unfortunately, innumeracy is common enough in our society for a lot of people to believe this explanation. In fact, the odds are that any four randomly chosen points *will* form something of a cross shape. In the book, it is suggested that you can determine the odds by forming an eight by eight grid over the area you are examining. However, the number of divisions in your grid depends upon how precise you want to make it. If you are simply looking for a cross shape, any cross shape, then a two by two grid is more than ample. Again, the book advises that the odds of each murder happening in the "right" place are one divided by the number of squares in the grid, and that each successive approximation reduces the number of squares by one. Thus, the odds are sixty four to one times sixty three to one times sixty two to one times sixty one to one, giving the number above. In fact, the first murder can take place anywhere. Using a reasonably sized scale, but demanding a fairly definitive cross shape, the second murder can occur anywhere except in the first square. (Actually, the possibilities are slightly better than that, but for simplicity of calculation we will forego some precision.) Using the book's own eight by eight grid would complicate the estimate, so we will reduce it to the two by two. The first murder can take place in any of the four squares. The second can occur in any of the three remaining, the third in two of the four, and the last in only one. Therefore the odds reduce to four to four times four to three times four to two times four to one, or odds of about ten to one for a very clear example. Well within the bounds of chance, and even more probable when other directing factors are taken into account. There is at least one other scientific error. In a remake of Christie's "And Then There Were None" (and the use of that plot does rather give the game away), a vacuum equipped toilet is used as a death trap. Let us merely say that, a) most people don't sit on the john in such a way as to create a vacuum seal, b) toilets have seats, and thus airgaps, c) you'd need an awfully big vacuum tank, d) "Total Recall" to the contrary, explosive decompression doesn't work that fast, and e) by that point, everybody would be spooked enough to use a chamber pot. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1999
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