Brian Whittle

Page Updated: 09/09/02

Brian Whittle

Prescription For Murder

by Brian Whittle

About the Author

Bibliography

Paperback - Warner (2002)

Prescription For Murder
With Jean Ritchie

The True Story of Dr Harold Shipman - the biggest serial killer of modern times
He was a pillar of the community, serving on local committees, donating prizes to the rugby club, organising charity collections. His patients thought the world of him: he was attentive, kind, never too busy to chat.
Yet Dr Harold Frederick Shipman was also the most prolific serial killer the world has ever known, with between two hundred and three hundred victims. Quietly, for many years, the small, bespectacled GP was making unexpected house calls - and walking out leaving a dead body behind.
They were near-perfect crimes. The middle-aged and elderly women he targeted trusted their doctor: they willingly rolled up their sleeves for what proved to be a fatal jab of morphine from his syringe. The murderous career of Dr Shipman only came to an end when police in Hyde, Greater Manchester, were called in to investigate a forged will. Overnight they found themselves embroiled in the biggest murder case in British history.
Prescription for Murder is a compelling account of these monstrous crimes and of the man who committed them. The authors have had unparalleled access to friends, colleagues and patients, and they examine Shipman’s early life and the traumatic death of his mother, his home life with his wife and children and his public front as a caring family doctor. Their in-depth and authoritative investigation looks at how he killed, how he was able to get away with it for so long and - most important of all - why he did it.

About The Author
Brian Whittle has been an investigative reporter on national newspapers for more than thirty years. He is currently editor and proprietor of Cavendish Press, the leading news?gathering agency in the north?west. Pictures taken by Cavendish Press of the first macabre exhumation by floodlight of one of Shipman's victims made the front pages of newspapers around the world. Brian Whittle's intimate knowledge of Hyde, the Greater Manchester area and the police investigation of Dr Harold Shipman make him ideally qualified to tell the story of the sinister GP.
Jean Ritchie is also an investigative journalist with more than thirty years' experience working for national newspapers and magazines. She is the author of sixteen books, including the bestselling Myra Hindley: Inside the Mind of a Murderess. Her other titles include Stalkers, the first full account of the stalking phenomenon, and The Secret World of Cults, an investigation into dangerous cults and religious sects. More recently she has written the bestselling Big Brother: The Official Unseen Story and Big Brother Two: The Official Unseen Story.

Bibliography
N.B. dates and publishers in dark red indicate British First Editions. Dates and publishers in black indicate recent reprints.

Prescription For Murder (Warner, 2000) Warner Pbk Jan 02