Who was Inspector Frederick Abberline, the lead detective in the Jack the Ripper case? Why did he and his fellow policemen fail to catch the most notorious serial killer of Victorian England? What was he like as a man, as a professional policeman, one of the best detectives of his generation? And how did he investigate the sequence of squalid, bloody murders that repelled - and fascinated - contemporaries and has been the subject of keen controversy ever since? Here at last in M.J. Trow's compelling biography of this pre-eminent Victorian policeman are the answers to these intriguing questions. Abberline's story gives us insight into his remarkable career, into the routines of Victorian policing, and into the Ripper case as it was seen by the best police minds of the day.