This book was... ok, I guess. It was quite boring, lackluster, dull even. The information was interesting, but there were a lot of details that were unnecessary and took away from the important information. The reader doesn't need the history of the man in charge of the fingerprint department. He or she doesn't need to know about the mill and the eels when he was a kid. Also, if you're going to delve into the details of how one Bobby worked his way up, you should do it for all involved with the investigation. Understandably, the book would have been significantly longer and no one would want to read it, so it makes sense that the history of the other investigators is absent from the pages. He shouldn't have included the fingerprint department head's story though, not to mention the background of each victim. Don't get me wrong, it's great that the author tried to shed more light on the victims rather than the killer, but I don't know if this was the right way to do it. We still got a lot about the killer, and yet nothing at all while getting very little about the actual deaths of certain victims and nothing of consequence about any of them. It's quite an enigma, actually; this book tells you quite a bit for it's 283 pages, and yet it tells you nothing. ( )

Finished this yesterday. a quick read but i have to say i was disappointed. Because of the raving reviews on amazon I had expected a great read but like the other reviewer mentioned, most of it was quite boring to read. Indeed it seems all were taken from transcripts. It is not bad but not great either. I missed the emotional touch in this book probably because most of it was taken from Scotland Yard's files.
I have read other historical true crime books were the author did manage to make it more personable so yes, it can be done. ( )

Quick read. Didn't answer my question of why. ( )