#12AngryRobotsOfChristmas ‘Letters From A Murderer’ by John Mathews

About the book…

New York, 1891: a rapidly changing city, torn between lamplight and electric light, where the burgeoning steel and railway industries attract a flood of humanity from every corner of the globe, fuelling cut-throat gangs, corruption and vice.

A prostitute is found brutally murdered. Immediately fear starts to spread. The victim bears the same hallmarks as Jack the Ripper’s recent killing spree in England. Could it be that the Ripper has crossed the Atlantic to fresh killing grounds? Or is this simply a copycat murder?

To solve the case, one of the original English Ripper pathologists, Finley Jameson, is teamed up with Joseph Argenti, one of the new ‘untouchable’ detectives, hand-picked by a New York Mayor eager to fight corruption.

But Michael Tierney, the city’s leading gangster, has his own ideas about how the city should be run. And as the body-count rises, and Jameson & Argenti are taunted by the killer in open letters, they find themselves fighting not just to save the next victim, but for the city’s very soul.

‘Letters From A Murderer’ was published in 2013 by Angry Robot imprint Exhibit A, and is the first in the Finley Jameson and Joseph Argenti series

I honestly do not have enough good things to say about ‘Letters From a Murderer‘, I genuinely don’t.

As a big fan of the Angry Robot imprint, I was a little sceptical about this Jack the Ripper tale and its efficacy but A.R are tried and tested in genre fiction so I needn’t have worried that the story would be treading on overly worn ground.

John Matthews treats the story from a fresh, new angle and breathes new life into a mystery that continues to fascinate and repel, all these years later.

The atmosphere and time is vividly recalled and I genuinely look forward to reading more by him.

About the author….

John Matthews is a leading British thriller writer. His books span genres of crime, action, mystery and legal-thriller and include: Basikasingo, The Crescent Wars, Past Imperfect, The Last Witness, The Second Amendment, Ascension Day, The Shadow Chaser, The Prophecy, and his current book series set in 1890s New York with the first days of criminal forensics.

They have been translated into 14 languages with total sales of 1.6 million. In 2007, Past Imperfect was included in a top ten all-time best legal thrillers list in The Times. He was one of only two British authors in the list.

​John is also an accomplished screenwriter, including a film adaptation for Past Imperfect and original screenplays, with two recent projects in collaboration with Nigel McCrery, creator of TV’s Silent Witness and New Tricks.