Ripper, by Stefan Petrucha

Orphan Carver Young has some general fantasies about becoming a detective, and devours novels and stories about  great sleuths, as well as serialized and sensationalized mysteries.  When ex-Pinkerton Detective Albert Hawking, cranky, contentious, eccentric, brilliant, and crippled, offers to take Carver on as an apprentice to share all he knows, Carver is ecstatic, even though it means living (for a reason I never really understood) in a private floor at the top of a mental institution, and getting more questions, half-hints, and criticism from Hawking than direct answers.  Carver's first and main "case" is to figure out the identity and possibly location of his father based on a scrap of a letter sent to the orphanage many years before.  As part of this Hawking introduces him to the "New Pinkertons", an underground (literally) and top-secret detective agency endowed by Alan Pinkerton upon his death. Hawking was head of the agency until his injuries forced him to give the reins to another former Pinkerton agent, Tudd, who is devoted to "gadgets" and buys many, many new mechanical, electrical inventions to help the secret agents with their investigations, and who is obsessed with catching a murderer, convinced it is the return of Jack the Ripper.

SPOILERS contained herein:    Carver's investigation twists and turns and overlaps with Hawking's and Tudd's conflicting methods of finding the serial killer who is stalking wealthy New Yorkers.  It leads him face to face with the killer on several occasions, but he manages to escape, coming to the conclusion that the murderer is both his father and the Ripper killer, playing an elaborate guessing game and dropping hints and clues reflecting the crimes he committed in London 8 years before.  Supporting characters are mostly well-drawn and add to the story, including police commissioner (and pre-President) Teddy Roosevelt who comes across as bombastic but honest, hardworking, proud, and generally an OK kind of guy (but still really bombastic!), and Delia, another teen from the orphanage, recently adopted by two newspaper reporters, and who fits the character of meddler perfectly, but not in an annoying way - she wants to be a real reporter, not just consigned to the "safe" things women reporters covered, and although I'd love to have seen more development with her, it's realistic that she'd help Carver, although it also seems realistic that she'd be digging a lot more than she actually does.  In contrast, there is a basic introduction to Alice Roosevelt that has some personality (precocious), but she's pretty much only needed for two scenes, and the first scene felt a bit forced in terms of getting her character there so she could be part of the final scene.  Same thing also goes for Finn, a teen whom Carver viewed as a bully at the orphanage and has no liking or sympathy for initially.  Finn has been adopted by the wealthy district attorney as a showpiece for the newspapers, and although he is well-dressed is treated more like an inconvenient and troublesome pet.  He's needed for some of the later scenes, but we don't get as much development about him as I'd have liked to have seen, and mostly it's done through dialogue exchanges rather than implications. 

The book does a great job with setting the scene and with mood.  There is a lot of detail that (mostly) doesn't feel like exposition, but gives a good feel for life in New York City in the mid-1890's, and is really interesting.  And it does a great job with keeping you on the edge of your seat, with plenty of cliffhangers that are quickly resolved in the next chapter, but which also keep building the suspense until the final confrontation.  The reader is never surprised that Carver's dad is Jack the Ripper (or they might have thought he was a copycat), but it was surprising to me that Hawking was Saucy Jack, as well...I thought they might be working in conjunction, but the actual physical transformation took me out of the story.  And I was left with several questions:

• Why the elaborate game?  Just for the sake of the game?
• Is that kind of disguise really that possible?  I know people see what they expect, but really?  
• Why does Hawking live at the top of a mental institution?  Is he acknowledging he is psychopathic, and in a way that amuses him?
• Was he ever really a good person, or was he just better at controlling his psychopathic urges?  Does trauma turn someone psychopathic?  How did the gang members convince him that he'd killed his wife and unborn baby?  Did he have any murderous behaviors in the 7 years between the "death" of his wife and child and the Whitechapel murders or were the battle wounds what pushed him over the edge?  What happened that Carver ended up at the orphanage and his mom ended up dead?
• Is his luring of Carver with clues, and alter-ego encouragement a way of getting close to him?  Does he want Carver to join him?  To encourage Carver to use his intelligence in a different way than Saucy Jack has chosen to use his?  Why didn't he get Carver at the orphanage when he found out he was alive?
• Is there going to be a sequel?  Seems like Saucy Jack would feel a need to pit his mind against Carver's again since he was kind of foiled this time.  The end felt very unsettled to me, but that also kind of met the mood of the book, as Jack comes back after an 8 year gap to commit new crimes, with connections to his past crimes.
• Who named Carver?

Overall, though, I'd say I liked it.  Definitely action-packed, good mood setting, I kept getting spooked, and I wanted to finish it!

SLJ: grades 6-10, and I'd agree with that.