I enjoyed reading this book, which covers, in chronological order, the attacks of the Yorkshire Ripper. The book sells itself as being 'On The Trail' of the ripper, this seems to relate to a description of the scenes of the attacks and where they can be found now. I dare say that, they would suffice as a guide to find the sites (if one were so ghoulishly minded) but, apart from this, the book adds little to the canon of literature surrounding this killer.

For a complete read, I would recommend Gordon Burn's excellent 'Somebody's Husband, Somebody's Son' for insight into Peter Sutcliffe and his strange and sometimes strained relationship with his wife Sonia.

Michael Bilton's 'Wicked Beyond Belief' also adds depth to the enquiry and its failings.

Anyway, this book feels like a good primer to the subject and does give a flavour of the emotions that surrounded this entire case.

Great book will be reading other books by this author.
Will also recommend this book to others.
Great read! 5****

Cobb's stance is clear: slack and incompetent actions (or lack of) by the Yorkshire Police resulted in the deaths of many women through a failure to pin Sutcliffe down when they had him in their sights, and after reading this book in one morning, I share his feelings.

A lot of the information in this book is already in the public domain but the way it stacks up as you read is truly horrifying. This was a time when women's accounts of assaults against them were not trusted; a deeply sexist time which I remember well but the actual disregarding of multiple concurrent photofits, the failure to follow leads, and the dogged refusal of the investigating team to drop their belief that the tapes were a hoax despite a lot of evidence to the contrary is dismaying.

This isn't a sensationalist account and the details of the women's murders didn't feel salacious.