My name is Martin Scholes. I like writing reviews on Ciao. I am married, we have a cockatiel and a c...
My name is Martin Scholes. I like writing reviews on Ciao. I am married, we have a cockatiel and a cat. And a growing African Grey. Who orders the cat around!
Member since:06.12.2003
Reviews:334
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The book by Paul Britton The Jigsaw Man is An interesting book. It tells how an underachiever from a state secondary modern eventually became the best criminal forensic psychological profiler in the UK. In fact from reading Britton's glowing paean of praise for himself, one would be led to the conclusion that Britton was the only forensic psychological profiler in the UK.
The book details in somewhat gruesome detail all of the cases that Britton has been involved in.
By reading the book one obtain the impression that Britton single-handedly (aided or sometimes stymied by the police) solved a variety of high-profile cases from the Fred and Rosemary West murders, the murder of Caroline Osborne in Leicestershire, the vicious double sex-assault murder of Samantha Bissett and her 4-year-old daughter Jazmine to name only a few. And there was of course the case of the murder of Rachel Nicklin, where he set up a sting to smoke out the man he was sure was the killer, Colin Stagg.
Hang on. Wasn't that case thrown out because the judge decided that Britton's attempts to get Stagg to implicate himself was "reprehensible?" In fact, Mr Justice Ognall went further, saying: "the police operation Britton directed as 'puppet master' was a 'wholly reprehensible' attempt to incriminate a defendant by 'deceptive conduct of the grossest kind'" Whilst Britton does mention some of this, his normally perfect recall of events seem to have failed to bring to mind the rather damning description of himself as a "puppet master" in the investigation. He also conveniently failed to recall that the police woman he convinced to take part in the "wholly reprehensible" operation became quite ill as a result of what she went through. Never mind the effect on Colin Stagg or the family of Rachel Nicklin!
For some reason Britton forgot to mention that in his book, and he also failed to mention a case when he wrongly told a police force that a person who claimed to have been Satanically abused by the then chief constable and the then attorney general was "telling the truth." That investigation, it was alleged, wasted £1,000,000 of police funding.
The book is an exercise in Paul Britton blowing his own trumpet and it is hard to know where reality stops and fantasy begins. A rather strange position for a reader to be in, when he or she is reading a book by a forensic psychologist and criminal profiler.
The book is interesting, and well-written, but the reader must be aware that sometimes what authors leave out of a story is Just as important as what they leave in.
I read this book a while back and although I knew about the Stagg/Nickell honeytrap I wasn't aware of the other errors not mentioned (but I suppose he wouldn't go bragging about those). Saying that, this book is miles better than the follow up 'Picking up the Pieces'.
Minha 31.07.2006 10:36
One for my list - thanks for the information. Hazel xx
Find "The Jigsaw Man (The Remarkable Career of Britain's Foremost Criminal Psychologist) - Paul Britton" New and Used on Amazon. Free UK Delivery on orders over £25.
Jul 30th, 2006
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