Product Description

'A book which will, with some justice, be compared to `In Cold Blood' and `The Executioner's Song'. It's as if Thomas Hardy were also present at the writing of this account of the Yorkshire Ripper.' Norman Mailer

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #63411 in Books
• Published on: 2004-03-04
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Synopsis
This study of Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, is an illuminating study about a mass murderer.

From the Back Cover
It seemed the case of the notorious Yorkshire Ripper was finally closed when Peter Sutcliffe was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1981. But in the early 1980s Gordon Burn spent three years living in Sutcliffe's home town of Bingley, researching his life. A modern classic, `Somebody's Husband, Somebody's Son' offers one of the most penetrating and provocative insights into the mind of a murderer ever written.

About the Author
Gordon Burn was born in Newcastle in 1948 and now lives in London. He is the author of the novels `Alma Cogan' (winner of the 1992 Whitbread First Novel Prize), `Fullalove' and `The North of England Home Service'. He is also the author of the works of non-fiction, `Somebody's Husband, Somebody's Son' (winner of a US Edgar Allan Poe award), `Pocket Money' and `Happy Like Murderers'. He wrote the text for Damien Hirst's book, `I want to spend the rest of my life everywhere, with everyone, one to one, always, forever, now' (1997), before their collaboration `On the Way to Work' (2001). In 1991 he was named columnist of the year in the Magazine Publishing Awards for his sports column in Esquire.

Customer Reviews

THE BANALITY OF EVIL
Many people over the years have published books about the 'Yorkshire Ripper' but this must have been the first, and maybe the last, to be written about Peter Sutcliffe. The distinction? the 'Yorkshire Ripper' is largely a media phenomenon, a tabloid bogeyman, an inhuman monster, but in this book Burn shows us that Peter Sutcliffe, despite his crimes, was very much in many ways your average Joe. He was and is: somebody's husband and somebody's son.

One might imagine that such a portrayal would therefore tend towards a liberal 'bleeding heart' style representation of someone who is still, to this day, an extremely controversial and newsworthy figure. That is where you would be wrong. The opposite in fact is true. Like Hannah Arendt's famous depiction of Adolf Eichman, what Burn's discovers is that it is the banality of Sutcliffe's evil that lends it it's most sinister aspect.

We do not read the words 'Yorkshire Ripper' untill 150 pages into the book and up till that point the significant figure in the book is not Peter Sutcliffe but John Sutcliffe, Peter's dad. Burn takes us deep into the heart of the world in which Peter Sutcliffe grew up, replete with the poverty, working class chauvinistic culture and the individual family members with their respective idiosyncracies.

Burn spent 3yrs living in Bingley and speaking with the people who knew Sutcliffe, not least his immediate family, and it shows. What emerges is a Sutcliffe who is human, all too human. His shyness, social awkwardness, devotion to his mother and love of motors are all here alongside the murder and gore.

Burn writes as a novelist rather than a journalist and therefore avoids the pitfalls of sensationalism and hyperbole to create a vivid picture of the world in which Sutcliffe emerged, a world of which Sutcliffe was a product of and not an unintelligible aberration. Burn's Sutcliffe is thus all the more unsettling for he is one of 'us' and not the constitutive 'other.'

Colin Wilson has described this book as "a book that will undoubtably become a classic in the field of investigative criminology" but to my mind it is so much more than that, in fact it is not criminology at all in it's classic sense but a novelistic yet naturalistic account of a particular time and particular place put in to sharp historical focus by the actions of a man born in Bingley, Yorkshire, in 1946 to John and Kathleen.

Best one about Sutcliffe
I really like Gordon Burn. I've read but two books by him, but thoroughly enjoyed them both. He is one of those authors who just have something in their narrative style that draws you in and mesmerises you.

I prefer his book about Fred and Rose West to be completely honest, but that is not due to Burn's writing, it is more due to my own personal interest in the West case. Peter Sutcliffe is not a particularly riveting psychological case really, unlike the West's who have to be examined closely to be believed, really.

I really, really, really hope Gordon Burn writes more true crime one day. I would adore to read something about Paul Bernado or Karla Homolka by him, or perhaps Dennis Nilsen.

behind the beard
Neither romantic nor hysterical, we are drawn into the underbelly of 1980s Northern England. Memories of 'Look North' and black and white newspapers are superbly resurrected; Sutcliffe's crimes played out against bitter and bingo. Beautifully paced, detailed without becoming dull, this account is as much a social commentary as an exploration of a disturbed (?)mind. As mentioned above,, read with Bilton's 'Wicked beyond belief' for the Police's part in the events. A fascinating insight into pre-computer, pre-DNA investigation.