- Hardcover: 400 pages
- Publisher: Granta Books; 1st ed 1st printg edition (1 May 2006)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1862077703
- ISBN-13: 978-1862077706
- Product Dimensions: 23.2 x 16.2 x 3.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 431,319 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Iain Sinclair in The Guardian
‘Jack of Jumps is a close-to-the-flesh vamping of hidden files and forensic memories’
Review
"'Seabrook is to be congratulated not just for revealing the skull beneath the skin, but for polishing it so effectively as well' Robert Carver, TLS"
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book concerns a series of murders which took place between 1959-1965, but are almost unknown. This book is the most detailed one to date and discusses the lives of the unfortunate victims in great detail. Yet there is not much about the polcie investigation or how the media worked. It brings a lot more information to the fore than was already known and so the author has to be congratulated on that. It is a sordid and disagreeable tale - but reflects reality.
However, the style of writing is confused and the book is difficult to read. Given that these crimes are not well known, some sort of introduction would have been helpful, letting the reader know where he is going and what to expect. Instead it jumps about in an episodic manner. It is a hard slog.
The other odd point is that though the author does not name the man suspected of these appalling crimes, he does give us a lot of information about him; certainly enough for him to be identified by cross referencing birth and marriage indexes and electoral registers. Given the man is still alive, this does seem rather dangerous.
Finally, as a fellow crime writer, I am puzzled as to how the author ahs bene given access to files which relate to a recent unsolved murder; usually the closure period is far more stringent.
However, the style of writing is confused and the book is difficult to read. Given that these crimes are not well known, some sort of introduction would have been helpful, letting the reader know where he is going and what to expect. Instead it jumps about in an episodic manner. It is a hard slog.
The other odd point is that though the author does not name the man suspected of these appalling crimes, he does give us a lot of information about him; certainly enough for him to be identified by cross referencing birth and marriage indexes and electoral registers. Given the man is still alive, this does seem rather dangerous.
Finally, as a fellow crime writer, I am puzzled as to how the author ahs bene given access to files which relate to a recent unsolved murder; usually the closure period is far more stringent.
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This book is something of a paradox: finely written and fantastically detailed, but also gratuitous and even prurient in its descriptions of the women's hideous deaths and miserable lives. They may have not been paragons, but they were victims, and David Seabrook shows little humanity to them in these pages. But if nothing else, the book certainly lifts the lid on the seamy side of 60s west London.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Reading David Seabrook's Jack of Jumps, London would seem to have been awash with prostitutes and ponces during the late 1950s and early 1960s. A number of prostitutes were murdered, a total of eight, though not all could have been assigned to the same culprit. Seabrook goes back over all the cases in great detail; these women led roving, itinerant lives, moving their lodgings, their basement flats and staying with other women and with various men, at frequent intervals. No one was ever convicted of killing any of the eight women, though there were a couple of attempts. The problems were ones of confusion, uncertainty, with an embarrassment of likely killers not the least of them. What a stew, what a stinkpot - almost deserving of a writer like Seabrook, misogynistic, sneering and offensively dismissive of the wretched lives of these women who serviced the dregs of London on a nightly basis.
Seabrook is trying to write in the same mode as David Peace (whose books set in West Yorkshire covered the time of the Yorkshire Ripper), or Gordon Burn (who has written of similar murders, including those of Fred West), but the trouble is he does not have the ventriloquistic talents, or the linguistic skills and depth of imagination of Burn, or the gritty realism and passionate intensity of David Peace. Seabrook cannot cut to the quick of an issue - he has to write around it until he's extracted the necessary sneer factor. Unpleasant isn't a strong enough word for this book. I'm not sure there is a word for it, but if so it's a nasty one.
Seabrook is trying to write in the same mode as David Peace (whose books set in West Yorkshire covered the time of the Yorkshire Ripper), or Gordon Burn (who has written of similar murders, including those of Fred West), but the trouble is he does not have the ventriloquistic talents, or the linguistic skills and depth of imagination of Burn, or the gritty realism and passionate intensity of David Peace. Seabrook cannot cut to the quick of an issue - he has to write around it until he's extracted the necessary sneer factor. Unpleasant isn't a strong enough word for this book. I'm not sure there is a word for it, but if so it's a nasty one.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
A Decidedly Odd Work
I will begin by saying that in terms of new, and in many cases surprising, information about the nude murders of the early to mid 1960s, this is a four star book and worthy of at... Read more
Published on 24 Jan 2007 by James A. Kalafus
Jack of Jumps
A meticulously researched and well-written book. Thought-provoking in the light of current events!
Published on 15 Dec 2006 by Fan of Mr. Seabrook
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