Book 71 - A History of British Serial Killing by David Wilson

Reading date - March 2021

David Wilson is that Scottish guy who is always on the murder shows in the UK. Chances are, if you've watched any true crime thing filmed in the UK, you know him.  He has recently grown a beard and this has lead to him becoming a zaddy, according to a few of my gay mates.  

Anyway, lust aside (sadly), lets get to the book.

I like DW. I find that he is human but also factual.  He doesn't wangle his opinion into things and lets you come to the decision you want to come to yourself.

This book is a history of serial killing but not in the way I thought it would be.  It's not sequential and timeline based.  The book begins with the people that serial killers usually go for (old people, gay people, sex workers) and explains why this may be - mainly because these people are either on the fringes of society or that the police don't take their complaints seriously.  We know old people get murdered cos they're often alone and don't have many visitors so nobody notices if they haven't been around.  We know sex workers get murdered because they're on the fringe and often homeless, so again, nobody really notices if they go missing.  We know why gay people get murdered, because again (historically) a lot of them who ended up murdered were down on their luck and those who survived and complained weren't taken seriously.

Instead of focusing on the killers, this book takes a chapter per type of victim and goes through how they become victims of murder and then outlines the murderers who took their lives.  Of course all the big hitters are in this book..the Wests, Nilsen, Shipman, Sutcliffe but there are also a few who aren't so well known and as I read this book two months ago, I have forgotten their names.

This is a very educational book written in a style which makes it easy to understand.  There are some facts and figures but they're easy to understand.