Ripper by Isabel Allende

"Which comes first the chicken or the egg? Perhaps my mission truly was decided by the position of the planets. In which case it was fated from the moment I was born. It was inevitable; I am only fulfilling my destiny. We'll never know, will we?"
              -the "Perp" from the novel

I found this novel when I was looking for Daughter of Fortune, a newer one by this author. I have read Allende before and I was expecting a story set in South America. Was I surprised! This one, apparently translated from Spanish, is a thriller---a story involving a serial killer in San Francisco. The title refers to a group of amateur sleuths playing an online game called Ripper. The group includes one main character, high school senior Amanda Jackson, her beloved grandfather Blake and some friends around the world. Ripper becomes an essential resource in solving multiple murders in the Bay Area.

There are numerous other significant characters to keep up with in the novel---Amanda's mother, Indiana; her father Deputy Chief of Homicide Bob Martin of SFPD; and Ryan Miller, former Navy Seal and war hero whose prosthetic leg does not hold him back. Of course, there are secondary characters, some of whom are killed in a series of strange murders. The precocious Amanda is like a chip off the old block (her father) but couldn't be more different from her mother, a free-spirited healer. Amanda is the first to determine connections between all the murders, which seem at first to be unrelated.

My favorite character was Ryan, a strong, brave and likeable character but with a temper, to be sure. He is in love with Indiana, called Indi, and when she disappears, Ryan and Ripper get busy, along with Indi's ex-husband, Bob Martin and the SFPD, trying to find her before it's too late. I kept guessing who the "perp" was and it was not until late in this almost-500 page novel that I knew for sure.

I am rating Ripper a 4. It really is longer than I like a book to be and there are so many characters to keep up with. It started out a little slow but soon became a page-turner. So bottom line: I liked it, didn't love it.