Fanny Newcomb and the Irish Channel Ripper

by Ana Brazil

Publication Date: November 1^st 2017

Sand Hill Review Press

Formats: Paperback & eBook

Genre: Fiction/Historical/Mystery

BLURB

Gilded Age New Orleans is overrun with prostitutes, pornographers, and a malicious Jack the Ripper copycat. As threatening letters to newspaper editors proclaim, no woman is safe from his blade.

Desperate to know who murdered her favorite student, ambitious typewriting teacher Fanny Newcomb launches into a hunt for the self-proclaimed Irish Channel Ripper. Fanny quickly enlists her well-connected employers—Principal Sylvia Giddings and her sister Dr. Olive—to help, and the women forge through saloons, cemeteries, slums, and houses of prostitution in their pursuit.

Fanny’s good intentions quickly infuriate her longtime beau Lawrence Decatur, while her reckless persistence confounds the talented police detective Daniel Crenshaw. Reluctantly, Lawrence and Daniel also lend their investigative talents to Fanny’s investigation.

As the murderer sets a date for his next heinous crime, can Fanny Newcomb and her crew stop the Irish Channel Ripper before he kills again?

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The Very Dark Shadows of Gilded Age New Orleans

Can I share a secret with you? New Orleans scares me.

It’s not just the hurricanes and the street hustlers and the heat-that-takes-my-breath-away. Sometimes it’s the beads and trinkets that are thrown-like-grenades from French Quarter balconies. Sometimes it’s the manic crowds that follow Mardi Gras parades.

And always, it’s the cemeteries that scare me. Even when I’m in a group of people. Even in the daylight.

Unlike other cemeteries in the south, the dead of old New Orleans are buried above ground. And they’re buried on top of each other, so that in the oldest cemeteries—like the Saint Louis cemeteries—the vaults are stacked high and wide. Walking around the cemeteries is like walking around a city of the dead.

I’m not afraid of the spirits of the dead; no, I actually find the spirits comforting. What creeps me out is that there are so many places to hide in these cemeteries. There are so many tall crypts and so many dark shadows to conceal real flesh-and-blood evil. Not to mention the solid brick walls around most of the oldest cemeteries. It just feels like once you’re inside these walls, no one can see you, no one can hear you, no one save you.

And that’s just how I feel about 21^st century New Orleans.

The more I research and know about Gilded Age New Orleans—those years after Civil War Reconstruction and before 1900—the more New Orleans REALLY scares me. Because those late 19^th century years were filled with lynchings and duels and assassination. And yellow fever epidemics and floods.

As a mystery writer, those calamities are too fascinating, too extreme to ignore. I’m totally seduced by New Orleans’ turbulent history.

Gilded Age New Orleans was so dark that in my novel Fanny Newcomb and the Irish Channel Ripper, a Jack the Ripper copycat stalks the city. The self-proclaimed Irish Channel Ripper threatens to slash and kill any woman who crosses his path.

But all is not lost! Just as my historical research exposed the darkness that troubled Gilded Age New Orleans, it also revealed some clever and courageous women who were ready to fight the social darkness that threatened their city.

I found a woman who ran the Daily Picayune newspaper, women who started kindergartens for immigrant children, and the women founders of the Christian Women’s Exchange, an organization that helped needy women sell their hand-made goods. (For the record, I also found a lot of very socially conscious men!)

Those real women helped to inspire my fictional heroine Fanny Newcomb. In 1889 (a few months after Jack the Ripper’s killing spree in London), Fanny is an ambitious typewriting teacher in the Irish Channel’s new settlement house. When her favorite student is murdered, she launches her own investigation to find the Jack the Ripper copycat.

Fanny is brave and bold, and certainly thinks that she’s equal to the shadows and secrets of the male-dominated city. But can she really outwit the corrupt police to actually identify the Irish Channel Ripper? She’ll forge through saloons, slums, a house of prostitution, and even a cemetery to find out.

I might always be scared within New Orleans’ old cemeteries, but at least now I have my heroine Fanny Newcomb, who will fight through the very dark shadows of Gilded Age New Orleans for me.

Author Info

A native of California, Ana Brazil lived in the south for many years. She earned her MA in American history from Florida State University and traveled her way through Mississippi as an architectural historian. Ana loves fried mullet, Greek Revival colonnades, and Miss Welty’s garden. She has a weakness for almost all things New Orleans. (Although she’s not sure just how it happened…but she favors bluegrass over jazz.) The Fanny Newcomb stories celebrate the tenacity, intelligence, and wisdom of the dozens of courageous and outrageous southern women that Ana is proud to call friends. Although Ana, her husband, and their dog Traveller live in the beautiful Oakland foothills, she is forever drawn to the lush mystique of New Orleans, where Fanny Newcomb and her friends are ever prepared to seek a certain justice.

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