Frederick West cheated everybody when he hung himself on New Year's Day 1995. Was this a sign of overwhelming guilt? Was West criminally insane or merely a sexual sadist of the worst kind? Brian Masters sets out to answer these questions.

Attending the Rosemary West trial on a daily basis, Masters has come up with a penetrating study of the sexual obsession that led to the measured killing of twelve women and girls. In the wake of the horrific detail of murder, sadism and torture that has come to light in the last few months, Masters, from his privileged courtroom vantage point, looks closely at how and why ordinary human beings were driven to serial killing of the most devious kind, and how an evil psychopath was able to ensnare so many in a web of unseeing complicity. He unravels with particular precision the legal means used to bring the whole matter to trial and weighs the evidence coolly and objectively.

Brian Masters has established his reputation as an authority on the criminal and psychopathic mind. This is his highly reasoned and psychologically acute look at what has become Britain's serial-killer trial of the century.