Hard to believe it looking at her now, but Rose West was an exceptionally beautiful little girl, with a Maltese mother and English father. Strangers would stop and stare at her in the street and she could entrance people from a very early age. But looking back at photos of Rose as a child, you struggle to accept that she grew up to one of the country's most notorious female criminals. What happened to that little girl to make her capable of such violence? Or was there something wrong, a predisposition to violence she was born with? In Rose, Jane Carter Woodrow goes right back to the start in her life to try and piece together what happened to turn Rose West into the violent monster she became. Jane has gained unprecedented access to the family and has revealed a fascinating story of how there was always something "not quite right" about Rose. Perhaps that's not too surprising. Rose's childhood reads like one of the most grim misery memoirs. Her father was a violent schizophrenic and her mother received electric shock therapy for severe clinical depression the whole way through her pregnancy with Rose. Jane has uncovered a horrific hidden story of a twisted family and how her upbringing made her a perfect partner for Fred West when they met when Rose had just turned 16. She was to kill for the first time a few months later. This is a gripping read that sheds light for the first time on the story behind what turned Rose West into one of the country's most vicious and deadly serial killers.

Jane Carter Woodrow has a PhD in Criminology from Cambridge and has worked as a scriptwriter on several high-profile television dramas, including In Suspicious Circumstances and The Bill.