Serial Killers Books

This is the latest effort to identify the Ripper that confuses interesting speculation for proof. The author's efforts to translate the addresses of the murders into an anagram identifying his trio of killers is ingenious but labored, and will remind students of the crimes of previous anagram solutions by John Wilding and the author, Wallace I believe, who fingered Lewis Carroll as the murderer. Much of it is written as if it's fiction, and the author does not even pretend to have sources that prove anything - instead reproducing marriage records that do not really establish his case. His focusing on Caroline Maxwell's sighting of Mary Jane Kelly after she supposedly died is interesting, but he never explains why Kelly allowed her whole plan to be jeopardized by such exposure after the murder - rather than slipping away under the cloak of darkness. Intrigued by the idea of Kelly as the killer? Track down the superb historical fiction novel, John Brooks Barry's The Michaelmas Girls.

I have never read this author before, and surely won't again. I'm sure it's easy for me to be an armchair critic, having never written a novel myself. But I sure have read zillions of 'em. This one is sorely lacking. Its prose leaves a lot to be desired--the conversations between the characters are boring and not realistic at all. And of course, the outcome is so predictable! It has taken me weeks to finish because I couldn't bear to pick it up again once I put it down. All I can say is, boring, boring, boring. Good book to read at bedtime! But I'm sure Mr. Huston is laughing all the way to the bank.

I picked up the book at the library and thank goodness, I didn't waste my money on this waste of a read. The book was more about the author, Stevie Cameron than about Willie Pickton and the murders at the pig farm. A good reason is because the trial is still on-going and most of the book was written during the pre-trial. The ban on media publication during the pre-trial stage didn't allow Stevie to add anything. What can she possibly write about? She's never met Willie Pickton and although she writes that she feels like she knows him through interviews of others that know him, it certainly didn't come across through her writing.

Much of the book included absolutely useless information (as it pertains to the subject matter). I don't know who Stevie Cameron is, perhaps she has a following for writing about white-collar crimes but based on this book, I would not read anything else written by her. This book was an autobiography of the author and what she went through in writing the book.

Although Montague John Druitt, a London barrister, was actually named as a suspect near the time of the 1888 murders (by an Assistant Chief Constable), and has been the subject of several major studies (by Tom Culle, Dan Farson, and Keith Skinner), this latest book about him spends much of its time on the details of his cricket matches, rather than on the evidence (or lack therof) against him. Based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's interest in the Ripper crimes, a visit to the Black Musuem of Scotland Yard and a story about the Ripper Leighton attributes to Doyle (but actually written decades later by William Baring-Gould), the author suggests Doyle as a better suspect - the very worst kind of accusation made for sensationalism alone. This adds virtually nothing to our knowledge of Druitt and also makes the error of taking some much-discredited Masonic conspiracy theories seriously.

If you're looking for actual interview transcripts with serial killers, forget it. While the author claims to have logged "counltess" hours in correspondence and meetings with various murderers, he has very little to show for the work that he supposedly did. Many of the quotes in this book come from sources such as statements to police or court transcripts that are publicly available. The names and crimes of the killers are already well documented elsewhere. Worse still, the style suffers from embarrassing cliches, pretentious hyperbole, and bogus moral outrage that is expressed while missing no opportunity to titillate the reader.

This is a lame piece of hack work.

I don't mean to sound like a high school student who was just told that they have to read Beowulf, but this totally sucks. The "factual" mistakes in the forward alone caused me to question just how many of her statements within the main text would be correct (e.g., "Richard" Dahmer, the inception of the M'Naughten Rule, as well as her overly generous view of the current capability to predict future violence). I finally gave up reading it because I didn't want to have a head full of incorrect knowledge. Hey, being the occasional pedant is bad enough; being a misinformed one is even worse :) Avoid this book!