Cornwell, best known for her Scarpetta novels, believes that the Ripper was Walter Richard Sickert, an impressionist artist who has been linked to the murders before.
The attack was linked to the later murders by the press, but most authors attribute it to gang violence unrelated to the Ripper case.
Opinions vary as to whether these murders should be linked to the same culprit, but five of the eleven Whitechapel murders, known as the "canonical five", are widely believed to be the work of Jack the Ripper.
Lowe and McHale are just over a month into their stint at the Ten Bells, a Victorian pub opposite Spitalfields church, once best known for its links to the Ripper murders but now a fashionable local hangout.
In addition to the eleven Whitechapel murders, commentators have linked other attacks to the Ripper.
It's a potent, unsettling fusion of psychology, art history and thriller, but frustratingly it gets bogged down in a subplot that tries to link Sickert to the real-life Ripper case.
He also believes he has an explanation for what happened to the Ripper.
He strangled his wife Ellen, but chopped up the body in a style similar to the Ripper.
She apparently employed a similar modus operandi to the Ripper.
