The Jigsaw Man

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While the subject matter, for the most part, is both carry and horrific, Britton goes out of his way to make it as digestible as he can. He split the book up to show the type of cases he works on and how each requires a different skill set to break apart. For many people living in England a lot of them will be very recognizable. For those outside perhaps not after all each of your countries has cases that spent week s in the news and will be remembered forever. For me, at least the serial killers Fred and Rosemary west is still rattling about in my subconscious. While I was too young to really take any notice of it at the time it is one of those stories that has left a stain that will never go away. The other is that of the Jamie Bulger, it wasn't until reading this book that I realized these two boys who had been turned in the spawn of the devil by the news were in fact around my own ages. A fact that seems to have a very chilling effect on me. In reading their interviews you get a very disturbing insight into these two boys worlds and just how little they cared. Britton displayed some detachment to the cases that he talked about which is understandable, to stay sane when dealing with such horrific crime some detachment is necessary. But it did feel like an unemotional read.

I love reading crime and thriller fiction books and I enjoy watching true crime programmes on tv so when friends were discussing The Jigsaw Man by Paul Britton I was immediately intrigued and wanted to read it. Paul Britton, a successful forensic/criminal psychologist, goes into detail on some of the most horrific cases the UK has seen. He discusses his role in the House of Horrors, the contamination of Heinz products, and the abduction of a newborn baby, as well as countless other murders and rapes.What he searches for at the crime scene are not frinerprints, fibres or bloodstains - he looks for the 'mind trace' left behind by those responsible: the psychological characteristics that can help the police to identify and understand the nature of the perpetrator. As early as 1983, Leicester local police turned to Paul Britton for help with the Caroline Osborne murder. The young woman had been brutally murdered the year before and found with satanic symbols on it. Despite the questioning of 15,000 people and the provisional arrest of 80 suspects, all investigations had previously been unsuccessful and the police were now hoping for new investigations. This case was one of the first in the UK to consider the involvement of a clinical psychologist. What would a forensic psychologist say about people who refuse to accept responsibility for their actions or that they might have been wrong?

I read this when it was published, and quite enjoyed it ( I was studying psychology). However, it has since become evident from the Colin Stagg miscarriage of justice that Mr Britton is an arrogant arseh*le who made up most of his so called science, and as far as I am aware, he has never apologised for his failures. Britton came to psychology late. He spent a year as a police cadet, then took a series of jobs before studying psychology in his late 20s. While working at a psychiatric hospital in Leicestershire, he was asked, informally, to help in a murder inquiry. His reputation grew and he became head of the regional forensic psychology service. He was consulted on some of the most notorious crimes of the 80s and 90s, from the kidnapping of Stephanie Slater to the horrors of Fred and Rosemary West's house. For all you aspiring forensic and criminal psychologists out there, if you’re looking for a bit of summer reading, I’d highly recommend The Jigsaw Man. It was a good but frustrating read. I’d still read more books by Paul Britton but I’d definitely take what he says with more of a pinch of salt than I did when I started reading this one.This does give the book a slightly repetitive feel sometimes, as whilst there is variation in the methodology of both killer and investigations and the personalities involved on both sides of the law, it sometimes feels as if Britton is working from a template to tell his side of these crimes. His tone doesn’t vary an awful amount either, being largely dispassionate and it sometimes feels as if he is writing a textbook or the basis for a lecture series. Although he does occasionally let his emotions show, usually when he sees the victim, or pictures of the victim, for the first time, the tone and pace of his writing doesn’t change a huge amount and it almost reads as if he’s expressing emotions because it feels like the right thing to do, rather than because he actually feels anything. His appearance before the British Psychological Society stems from a complaint about Colin Stagg's treatment. It is understood that it has taken so long for the society to put the allegations before Britton because of the possibility that civil action would be taken against the psychologist.