Isolated in Ashworth House, and asylum for the criminally insane, is the Ripper. He believes he's the notorious butcher who terrorized Whitechapel more than a century ago. He talks of time travel, infinity, and the occult. In the black hole of his imagination, he reenacts the crimes. In the darkness of his heart, he still craves the thrill of the kill. Thank God he can't escape. But with such an ingenious mind for murder, the Ripper doesn't have to—and the ghastly crimes he can manipulate form his padded cell are taking Zinc Chandler and the Special X investigators on a trail of unspeakable carnage that leads to the idyllic Cook Islands, where human sacrifice and cannibalism is more than a dark and perverted chapter in history. It's tradition.