A true crime story, this is a factual overview of the 30 rapes and 3 murders committed by John Patrick Duffy around London and the Home Counties during the 1980’s, and his eventual arrest and conviction.

There are several spelling mistakes, typos of the type spell check won’t catch (e.g. even for event around loc106, and tired instead of tried), and grammar errors including missing apostrophes (e.g. the killers blood). It also shifts tense from past to present due to a confusion of had and has and around loc 218 fails to capitalise ‘I’ several times. These errors are frequent enough to be annoying.

While it retells the history of the case, it has a fairly flat style, and doesn’t go into details. Half the book retells the bare bones of the case. Then it goes into a short piece on each victim, but doesn’t include anything the first section has not already said. The best parts are definitely the quotes from the police investigators, and those are available elsewhere.

In some ways I feel as though I’ve just read the draft notes for a true crime book, unproofed and not yet fleshed out. As an overview it provides enough detail, but I’m honestly not sure I’d pay for this.

If I rated this it would be low due the spelling errors, but fixing those might not raise it much. However I’m not rating this because any rating I gave would be misleading. This is an overview and introduction to the case, but for true crime readers who want actual investigative details or a breakdown of the investigation over time, it is probably going to be too short to appeal, and much of the information in it is available online.