Very entertaining, if you're looking for SF history

books:

	• The Bell Tower: Jack the Ripper in San Francisco Robert Graysmith Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1999 - 300 pages view larger image
	for more information click here

Ignore the Jack the Ripper Subtitle

I am a Jack the Ripper buff, and that is why I got this from the library, but I found it more interesting if I didn't think about the Jack the Ripper subplot. It is written well, and an interesting case. If you're only interested in Jack the Ripper, go elsewhere. But if you're interested in William Hearst, San Francisco in the early 20th century and well-written "true"-crime, this is a great example.

Very entertaining, if you're looking for SF history

I really enjoyed the book, but the title was very misleading. If the Jack the Ripper subtext had been left out, I would have enjoyed this book far more. I'm from northern California and so a lot of the locales in the book were familiar. As a well versed Ripper reader, I was rather unimpressed with Graysmith's conclusions. I also have a copy of Zodiac sitting on my book shelf, so I know that Graysmith is quite capable of both good writing and good investigative skill. Perhaps the editor should've stepped in and worked with the author about the direction of this book.

for more information click here

reviews: page 1, 2, 3

The year is 1896: The Jack the Ripper murders stop as mysteriously as they started. Five years later, in a San Francisco church, brutally murdered priests, choirboys,and parishioners begin to appear. The pastor, an English priest, bears an uncanny resemblance to the one eyewitness report of the sole survivor of a Jack the Ripper attack in London years earlier. But another man has already been arrested, tried, and convicted for the San Francisco slayings....