Published by Carroll & Graf
What the critics said about THE WHITECHAPEL HORRORS:
"...A stunning treatment of the Jack the Ripper murders as solved by Holmes and Watson... Hanna's presentation is drenched in fog and gaslight and may well become the definitive version for Holmes and Ripper scholars alike."
-- The Denver Post
"Mr Hanna... has produced a splendid work firmly rooted in the great Conan Doyle tradition. His scholarly mastery of the Ripper murders and the intricacies of Sherlockiana is flawless.... This splendid book deserves to be welcomed as the finest apocryphal Holmes novel yet written.. Run out, buy and devour."
-- The Washington Times
"The Whitechapel Horrors is a first class detective novel. A sound, well thought out and logical plot involving Sherlock Homes and Dr. Watson in The Case of the Century, Jack the Ripper. There have been many fictional attempts at resolving this mystery and several involving Sherlock Holmes, but this is the best by far... Good plot, good dialog and good writing make 'The Whitechapel Horrors' worth reading."
-- Sherlockian Review
"The Whitechapel Horrors shows us a Sherlock Holmes pushed to the limits of his legendary endurance. Mr. Hanna... has produced an intriguing and sometimes pulse-pounding narrative... a solid addition to the Sherlock Holmes canon and a must read..."
Selected by the Los Angeles Times as being among the best mysteries of the year: "Late 19th Century London becomes extraordinarily real, and nothing is slier about Hanna's melding of Holmes and the Ripper than his adroit resolution of a case on which history's verdict has remained open."
"...A stunningly skillful re-creation of A. Conan Doyle's famous detective... Hanna does an excellent job of creating foggy London between the pages of the book. The Whitechapel Horrors will afford you several hours of first-class mystery entertainment."
-- The Macon Beacon
"A remarkably fresh and inventive integration of Holmesian lore into classic Jack the Ripper mythology."
-- Publishers Weekly
"The Whitechapel Horrors is at once romantic, mysterious, Gothic and psychological."
-- The New York Times
"Hanna's work will delight the legions who venerate Holmes, so convincing is the writer in rendering the rhythms of Victorian speech and the quaint oddities of the British class system."
-- The Chicago Sun-Times
"An absolute must-read for all Holmesian scholars and fans."
-- The Booklist
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AN EXCERPT FROM THE NOVEL:
The parcel arrived in the forenoon post and was brought up with their 'elevenses,' their late morning tea. It was certainly innocent-looking enough: a small pasteboard box wrapped in plain brown paper and tied with string, with nothing at all on the outside to indicate that it contained a portion of a human organ. At the moment, the object in question was resting in the saucer which Holmes had hurriedly removed from beneath his teacup especially to accommodate it, and Watson was subjecting it to a close examination.
Holmes waited patiently until he finished. "Well?"
Watson sat back in his chair and pulled at his chin, considering for a moment. He, like Holmes, had been badly shaken when the parcel had been opened and its contents spilled out, but his professional training had quickly come to the fore.
"It is the remains of a kidney," he said in a business-like tone. "A left one. It has been preserved in spirits, it has about an inch of renal artery still attached, and it would seem to be from an adult human. Whether it be male or female, I cannot tell."
"But it is a human organ, of that you're certain?
Watson nodded. He was not offended by the question. Holmes in no way meant to impugn his knowledge of human anatomy, and Watson knew it, but some organs of certain animals, such as sheep and pigs, could bare a striking superficial likeness to human organs, and more than one unwary lecturer in pathology had been taken-in by practical jokesters among his medical students.
"If this organ belonged to an animal," Watson replied wryly, "it was an exceedingly heavy drinker. This is what is called a 'ginny kidney.' Its former owner punished the bottle steadily. It also appears to be in an advanced state of Bright's Disease, a form of nephritis. If we had the liver to go with it, I should not be at all surprised to detect signs of cirrhosis."
Holmes grunted. "And I should not be at all surprised to find that it belonged, until quite recently, to one Katherine Eddowes and is one of the organs removed from her body after her murder. It would seem that our friend, Saucy Jack, has a rather macabre sense of humor, among his other little peculiarities."
