LADY ELEANOR TRUE CRIME REVIEW: Rose West: The Making of a Monster - Jane Carter Woodrow

Release Date: 07/07/11

SYNOPSIS:

Although it's hard to believe now, Rose West was an exceptionally beautiful little girl with long, glossy dark hair and big brown eyes. Strangers would stop and stare at her in the street and she could entrance people from an early age. Looking at photos of young Rosie as a child, it is almost impossible to comprehend that she would grow up to become one of Britain's most notorious female murderers.

What happened to that little girl to make her capable of such violence? Or was there something wrong - a predisposition to cruelty - which she was born with?

Crime writer Jane Carter Woodrow goes back to the start of Rose's life to piece together what it was that turned her into a monster. In doing so, she presents us with a profile of the young Rose West and a fascinating insight into the mind of a killer.

Rose's early life made her the perfect partner for Fred West when they met just before her sixteenth birthday. But the young teenager would kill for the first time a few months later, alone and unaided, while Fred was in prison. Her part in the killings is very different to that which many people believe even today.

ROSE is a gripping read which sheds light for the first time on the real story of Rose West - taking the reader on a journey from her childhood through to her becoming the country's biggest and most infamous female sexual predator and serial killer.


REVIEW:

Books about the dark figures of the macabre are quite common and they tend to focus on the crimes. What this title by Jane Woodrow does however is bring the prehistory of Rose West to the fore going as far back as her grandparents so that the reader has a social setting to see how the events of her life helped form her into the woman she was to become.

It is a title that’s been very carefully researched, the background information is extensive and getting a fuller picture is something that I feel other books could benefit from. Add to this an author who backs up the research with straight facts and this was a title that was more than an interesting read.

The only problem with this novel was that the crimes to which Rose West was jailed weren’t gone into in any great detail and whilst the reader will probably breathe a sigh of relief for this, I felt that it presented a less than full portrayal of the subject. All in, this book is one that has to be read by people who are curious about Serial Killers and for the fact that it’s fairly unique with its parameters it’s a novel that deserves to be read.