The Secret Serial Killer: The True Story of Kieran Kelly

Today's post is on The Secret Serial Killer: The True Story of Kieran Kelly by Robert Mulhern. It is 196 pages long and is published by Pen and Sword True Crime. The cover is a picture of Kieran Kelly. The intended reader is someone who is interested in true crime and unsolved murders. There is mild foul language, discussion of sex, and discussion of violence in this book. There Be Spoilers Ahead.

From the dust jacket- Journalist Robert Mulhern has spent three years investigating claims Kieran Kelly, a two-time convicted killer, has in fact murdered amn more people- 31 to be exact. Kelly's claims first emerged in 193 after he killed his cellmate in London's Clapham Police Station, having been arrested for being drunk and disorderly. Under questioning, the labourer from Ireland candidly confessed to strangling the prisoner to dozens of unreported and unsolved murders over the previous 30 years.
Kelly's victims died from stabbing, strangulation and blunt force trauma. Others survived being thrown in the path of trains on the London Underground.
Detectives believed they were in the presence of Britain's most prolific serial killer, yet Kelly's claims escaped public scrutiny for three decades. Then in 2015, a former police officer alleged the murders had been covered up the British Government. A sense of urgency gathered around the case; a new investigation begged to be undertaken. Especially after it emerged that remains, thought to be human, had been discovered on the site of Kelly's one-time home in Ireland. Against the background of intense international media interest, London's then Metropolitan Police chief, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, committed to revisited the case. In this thrilling new book we cross two countries and three police forces in search of the truth.
Using new eye-witness testimonies, the case of Kiernam Kelly, has been been methodically rebuilt, with new evidence gathered from a range of sources in Britain and Ireland. Fighting a fog of contradictory claims, the narrative pursuit of the Secret Serial Killer negotiates a series of curious twists before culminating in a bizarre showdown on the commons that Kelly himself once stalked.

Review- This is a circuitous narrative that ends up nowhere and I am not sure if that is the author's fault or the story itself. Kieran Kelly was in jail when he killed a fellow inmate then he confessed to thirty odd more murders to the police. The author Mulhern comes into the story of Kelly much later as he contacted by the former police officer Geoff Platt and then Mulhern begins his own investigation into the crimes himself. It is very detailed with interviews with people who knew Kelly, worked on his cases on both sides of it, and get access to files but not all of them. That is one of the questions this book brings up why is some of the Kelly case open to the public but not all and what parts are not? The murders are terrible but he Kelly kill any of the other people he claimed to have or is it the just delusions of a sick man? In the end I am not sure of anything. This book, in my opinion, just rises more questions about the cases around Kelly than answers.

I give this book a Three out of Five stars. I get nothing for my review and I borrowed this book from my local library.