T A B L E_T A L K A stroll through the jardins, perhaps? It's always springtime in Paris in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk   Find a world of travel books -- new, rare and out-of-print -- at barnesandnoble.com Search by:  Keyword Title Author     R E C E N T L Y Korea's no-man's-land By Rolf Potts The DMZ is one of the planet's oddest tourist attractions, where visitors can pick up everything from propaganda to perfume (02/03/99) Suite liberties By Chris Haines A travel magazine employee gets free luxury hotel rooms and four-course feasts -- but there's always a price to pay (02/02/99) The new great place By Jeff Greenwald Luang Prabang has been discovered -- and once laid-back Laos will never be the same (01/31/99) This week in travel Wanderlust's selective guide to travel-related news from across the globe (01/29/99) "My Mexico" By Diana Kennedy Mexico's foremost food writer celebrates the culinary traditions of Campeche (01/28/99) Browse the Wanderlust Feature archives Wanderlust's Official Travel Book Partner		_______dead ends I N   L O N D O N   Jack the Ripper returns to life on a grisly but gripping tour. BY LAURA BILLINGS | The windows of our wood-paneled station wagon are down, and the sea salt in the breeze makes our hair stand stiffly on end when we slow for pit stops at the Texaco. Dad is behind the wheel, Mom is riding shotgun and trying her best to interest us in scenic New England. "Look, guys, see the covered bridge?" she says brightly. "You missed it," she sighs again. It is 1976 and my parents have taken my brother and me on a whistle-stop journey through the bicentennial East. They've filled an "activity box" with a stunning array of games, books and Mad-libs designed to appeal to the gifted and talented children they fervently wish we would be, but all that holds our attention are pages 575 and 576 of "The People's Almanac." Poring over the "Unsolved Mysteries" chapter with heads together and lips in motion, we read and reread every grisly misdeed attributed to Jack the Ripper -- or simply Jack, as we call him, as we would a favorite uncle. Even when we are forced to shut the book and get out of the car to ride the Maid of the Mist to Niagara Falls, to see the Lincoln Memorial, to pose for pictures tossing fake tea into Boston Harbor, Jack's grim specter follows us. "When Jack ate that hooker's kidney," my 7-year-old brother asks, "do you think he fried it or baked it?" "Neither," I offer, like the 9-year-old wit I am. "He made a kidney pie." I can still hear my mother groaning. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - I'd nearly forgotten my Jack the Ripper obsession (I once memorized the dates and details of each of the five unsolved murders attributed to him, but it never proved useful in real life), until I found myself in London recently, looking for something to do on a Sunday night. I picked up a brochure from the Original London Walks tour company and discovered that Donald Rumbelow, a former member of the City of London police force and "an internationally recognised expert" on the so-called Whitechapel Murders, was leading a walking tour through Jack the Ripper's East End stomping grounds. "You want to go to this?" my boyfriend said, a little incredulously. "He killed girls, you know." I know. In fact, some theorists have even proposed that the Ripper was a girl -- "Jill the Ripper" -- though, as my brother and I concluded 20 years ago, a woman probably wouldn't have had the upper body strength to slit a woman's throat straight to the spine. For that you had to be a surgeon, a meat-cutter, an adrenalized whack-job or, at very least, an NFL running back. I looked forward to discussing the various conspiracy theories (Was it Queen Victoria's fey grandson, the Duke of Clarence? Did Sir Arthur Conan Doyle have any inside poop?) with our guide, assuming that we'd be joining a small group of mystery buffs and perverts. But when we arrive at the Tower Hill tube station we find Rumbelow, a ruddy-faced fellow in the standard-issue waxed cotton coat taking money (4-and-a-half pounds each) from more than 100 other tourists: Japanese with video cameras, American kids in fraternity sweat shirts, ripely aromatic Germans, English ladies in tweed skirts and sensible shoes. How can a serial killer who did his best work in 1888 still cast such a spell? I wonder. Or are all the hot plays just sold out? N E X T+P A G E | Five lowly prostitutes murdered in the worst part of London _________________________________ For more information: _________________________________ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Become a Salon member. Click here.