A interesting and informative book about the Yorkshire Ripper. A book that was respectful to the victims. Well written and easy to read.

When the Yorkshire Ripper was on the loose I was a young child living in the North West of England. This case fascinated me especially knowing how frightened women were and I desperately wanted him to get caught. Being young and impressionable I thought that the police would catch him quickly and lock him up in prison forever, that obviously didn’t happen. Throughout the years I have watched countless documentaries and read books and news articles about this case, and I have to say that this is one of the best books that I have ever read on the subject. I have gained lots of new information when I thought I knew everything there was to know.

The book is written in a straightforward way and so is easy to read. The author is very respectful to all of the victims whether still alive or dead. Throughout the book we also get to know from Peter Sutcliffe’s POV what happened with each victim. The thing that manages to make me angry every time I read or watch anything about this case is the amount of mistakes the police made. Throughout this book I became aware of other mistakes they made that were new to me.

Whether you think that you know all there is to know about this case or just know the basics I highly recommend this book.

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.