Tessa Harris's "The Sixth Victim"

Tessa Harris is the award-winning author of The Anatomist’s Apprentice, the first of her Dr. Thomas Silkstone series. The Sixth Victim is the first book in her new Constance Piper Mystery series. Harris is based near London, England.

Here she dreamcasts an adaptation of The Sixth Victim:

I’m a great fan of the TV series Ripper Street. In fact anything on the small screen, or silver, that evokes the dark, tawdry and slightly supernatural world of late Victorian London draws me like the proverbial moth to a flame.

The Sixth Victim tells the story of Whitechapel flower girl Constance Piper, whose close friendship with her high-born mentor, Emily Tindall, leads her to discover she can communicate with the dead. It’s set against the backdrop of the Jack the Ripper murders and I loved conjuring up the murky underworld of the East End of the time.

Although in the audio book (Blackstone) Constance and Emily are played by two different actors – the uber-talented Fiona Hardingham and Gemma Dawson – I had the idea that, in my dreamcast - both characters could be played by the same person. That’s because, although the story is written from two viewpoints, I leave it to the reader to judge whether Constance is really psychic or psychologically challenged. For both roles the amazing Emma Watson would be perfect: an impoverished girl who wants to better herself – as in her recent Belle in Beauty and the Beast – and a well-educated, intelligent young woman, as in Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter series.

As for the male lead, Detective Inspector Thaddeus Hawkins – whom we meet at greater length in the second book in my series - that role would go to the wonderful Eddie Redmayne. I adored him when I first saw him in My Week With Marilyn and of course he was magnificent as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything.

As for my chosen director – that would have to be Tim Burton. He’s known for making films with quirky, Gothic twists such as Sleepy Hollow, Sweeney Todd and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. I’m sure he’d bring the wicked streets of Whitechapel in the 1880s to life in his own, unique style.

Visit Tessa Harris's website.

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