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A review by theanitaalvarez
Jocul Ripper by Isabel Allende, Cornelia Rădulescu
3.0
Isabel Allende is usually a safe bet when choosing something nice and fun to read. In that sense, Ripper didn’t disappoint me. I was expecting a light and entertaining reading and that’s what I got.
Having said that, I’ll also say that this is not Allende’s finest work (no, that’s The House of the Spirits). At the beginning, I had a hard time getting into the plot. There’s a lot of descriptions of characters and a lot of backstory, that I think could’ve been fitted better in the plot itself. But, in general, I liked the characters.
In true Allende style, all the c haracters in Ripper are, so to speak, excentrics. And the center is, of course, a family. The Martín-Jackson’s. And they are pretty mucho your standard dysfunctional family. Divorced parents (who actually get on pretty well), odd friends that act as honorary families, and a genius child who is at the centre of their lives.
The story is set in San Francisco, in 2011. A series of gruesome murders have begins in the different areas of the city, following an astrologist’s (friend of the family involved) announcement of a “blood bath” in the city. They are all completely different in MO and the victims have nothing to do with each other. But Amanda Martín, the daughter of the chief police inspector, and her friends who play the RPG Ripper are just no buying it.
No, they think that it is the work of only one killer. A serial killer that is executing these people for no apparent reason. And these killings are getting closer and closer to Amanda’s family. Her father is the police in charge of all those investigations, and her mother, Indiana, is in danger (not a spoiler: it’s the first line of the book). So she has to rally all her on-line friends in order to discover the truth before it is too late. The problem here is that I thought that the urgency was kind of missing. I mean, Amanda got the time to get on-line several times in one day, when her mother was about to be murdered. I don't know, it didn't felt too dangerous at that point. Though the novel got quicker and more urgent in the last few pages.
Around that part was when the plot began to take form and I began to enjoy it more and more. I totally saw one of the plot twists coming, howeverthat the killer was Carol Underwater and that she was obsessed with Indiana for some reason . The other one, that came a little later was more unexpected that Carol Underwater was also Gary Brunswick, who was more clearly obsessed with Indiana .
As I said before, there were some moments that felt slightly useless. There’s a moment in which Amanda goes to a rave at an abandoned house, the police raid the party and she hides herself. She then calls Ryan Miller, an ex-Navy SEAL who is in love with Indiana, to rescue her. All that, so she can meet one of Miller’s friends. They could have met at any other time, without getting such a convoluted subplot. And there were others that were convoluted.
And of course, there’s still some sort of magical realism. Indiana is protected by spirits, and Ryan is haunted by some ghosts of his past (although this one can have a psychological explanation). I felt it a little out of place in a story about detectives and cold logic. But Allende mae it work somehow and it didn’t bother me much. It might be because I’m Latina and we live in a magical-realist world. Or I was just too caught up reading the book, which is equally possible.
Three stars for pure joy and entertainment (yes, I value those things and I’m not ashamed), and for Ryan Miller. I really liked him!
Having said that, I’ll also say that this is not Allende’s finest work (no, that’s The House of the Spirits). At the beginning, I had a hard time getting into the plot. There’s a lot of descriptions of characters and a lot of backstory, that I think could’ve been fitted better in the plot itself. But, in general, I liked the characters.
In true Allende style, all the c haracters in Ripper are, so to speak, excentrics. And the center is, of course, a family. The Martín-Jackson’s. And they are pretty mucho your standard dysfunctional family. Divorced parents (who actually get on pretty well), odd friends that act as honorary families, and a genius child who is at the centre of their lives.
The story is set in San Francisco, in 2011. A series of gruesome murders have begins in the different areas of the city, following an astrologist’s (friend of the family involved) announcement of a “blood bath” in the city. They are all completely different in MO and the victims have nothing to do with each other. But Amanda Martín, the daughter of the chief police inspector, and her friends who play the RPG Ripper are just no buying it.
No, they think that it is the work of only one killer. A serial killer that is executing these people for no apparent reason. And these killings are getting closer and closer to Amanda’s family. Her father is the police in charge of all those investigations, and her mother, Indiana, is in danger (not a spoiler: it’s the first line of the book). So she has to rally all her on-line friends in order to discover the truth before it is too late. The problem here is that I thought that the urgency was kind of missing. I mean, Amanda got the time to get on-line several times in one day, when her mother was about to be murdered. I don't know, it didn't felt too dangerous at that point. Though the novel got quicker and more urgent in the last few pages.
Around that part was when the plot began to take form and I began to enjoy it more and more. I totally saw one of the plot twists coming, however
As I said before, there were some moments that felt slightly useless. There’s a moment in which Amanda goes to a rave at an abandoned house, the police raid the party and she hides herself. She then calls Ryan Miller, an ex-Navy SEAL who is in love with Indiana, to rescue her. All that, so she can meet one of Miller’s friends. They could have met at any other time, without getting such a convoluted subplot. And there were others that were convoluted.
And of course, there’s still some sort of magical realism. Indiana is protected by spirits, and Ryan is haunted by some ghosts of his past (although this one can have a psychological explanation). I felt it a little out of place in a story about detectives and cold logic. But Allende mae it work somehow and it didn’t bother me much. It might be because I’m Latina and we live in a magical-realist world. Or I was just too caught up reading the book, which is equally possible.
Three stars for pure joy and entertainment (yes, I value those things and I’m not ashamed), and for Ryan Miller. I really liked him!