Some eighteen months ago I wrote a paragraph which turned into a year long project:
“Sealed records from Scotland Yard, now opened, note that Chief Inspector Donald Swanson, the senior investigating officer on the Whitechapel murders, was provided with the sum of 1000 guineas in October 1888. Swanson’s instructions were apparently to put an end to the killings ‘by whatever means necessary’. What happened to the money is not known.”
As a result, writer and artist Alan M Clark asked me if I would be willing to write about what that implied, and in the process, work with him on a conclusion to his thoughtful and humane series of historical novels about the women who died during Whitechapel’s Autumn of Terror. Reconstructions, fictional but faithful, of the lives of the women themselves.
I have a lot of respect for Alan’s approach, and in the end, the only way I could do his ideas justice was to explore a female protagonist of my own, Catherine Weatherhead. A young woman whose life ran alongside Mary Jane Kelly’s, but at a distance.
Being me, I also chose to include many aspects of period spiritualism alongside the historical setting and events, and to let in questions of the Aether and the nature of psychic powers. This brought my contribution in line with my longer series on murder and the supernatural, Tales of the Last Edwardian. So it’s almost a prequel to some of my other stories, in fact, and introduces characters also to be found in the early 1900s – especially the feared Deptford Assassin. Here, you finally find out how he earned that title.
Not only did we construct our own takes on these Victorian lives in our individual books, but we worked closely together on the concept of an interwoven version, where readers could get the whole picture, as it were. This involved repeated cross-checking of the minutiae of dates and timing, character interactions across both books, and the pacing of the final outcome in November 1888. But we got there.
That book, 13 Miller’s Court, which contains both of our novels interleaved, is out today – on the one hundred and thirtieth anniversary of Mary Jane Kelly’s death. We have tried to serve her with respect and honesty…
Announcing the Release of 13 MILLER’S COURT
Two young women walk the streets of London, barely aware of each other’s existence. Each pursues a course that puts her at risk, but whilst Catherine Weatherhead contemplates exposure and failure, Mary Jane Kelly must fear for her very life.
13 Miller’s Court brings their stories together in one volume, their struggles and hopes interwoven in a vista of 1880s London where no one person sees everything. Or do they?
The city has a killer at its heart, and both women know who he is. He moves in shadow, and he does whatever suits his purposes – nor does it seem that anyone can stop him. Is he the solution to their problems, or one more terror they must face?
The death of Martha Tabram, on 7th August 1888, changes everything. For Martha, born in Catherine’s Southwark and killed in Mary Jane’s Whitechapel, poses a new question.
Are there now two monsters in London Town?
Perspectives and secrets; revenge and rivalries. Bloody murder, and two women caught up in the storm. Read 13 Miller’s Court and learn about the human cost of the Autumn of Terror.
“I met yuir man once, after the end, aye – if man he was. I met him, and saw those eyes for myself. I would nae put that sight into yuir head, not if you filled my cap with sovereigns. When next I stand by St Peter’s Kirk, I’ll pray on those old stones and ask. Did I do the Lord’s work, or someone else’s?”
Chief Inspector Donald Swanson, Scotland Yard
13 Miller’s Court is comprised of two novels: The Assassin’s Coin, by John Linwood Grant (which is also an early, crucial story of his mysterious and deadly character Edwin Dry, the Deptford Assassin), and The Prostitute’s Price, by Alan M. Clark, about the life of Mary Jane Kelly, the fifth book in his Jack the Ripper Victims series. The authors wrote the novels as companion pieces. Both books are previously released by IFD Publishing.
Though the two stories are whole and appear separately in paperbacks and ebooks, they are larger still when read together, each with its own point-of-view protagonist. Here IFD Publishing presents the stories together in one book, their chapters alternating. They share the same timeline, some characters and scenes. Both tales lead the reader to 13 Miller’s Court itself, a room made infamous during the Autumn of Terror.
13 Miller’s Court – Available now on Amazon in the States, and due any day in the UK
THE INDIVIDUAL NOVELS
A novel that beats back our assumptions about the time of Jack the Ripper. A tale of Mary Jane Kelly, a woman alive with all the emotional complexity of women today. Running from a man and her past, she must recover a valuable necklace and sell it to escape London. Driven by powerful, conflicting emotions, she tries to sneak past the deadly menace that bars her exit.
She is Catherine Weatherhead, and she is Madame Rostov. She will lie. She will deceive. She will change the course of history, for she is haunted, and murder speaks to her. In Whitechapel, all talk is of the one they call Jack the Ripper, but there is another killer in play, and he most definitely has a name. Mr Edwin Dry, the Deptford Assassin. The truth is not what you believe. It is what Catherine and Mr Dry make it.
We’ll be back in a couple of days with all sorts of other weird news…