Editor Alan Wallcroft, who was BBC Radio and Television's special co-ordinator and reporter on the Cromwell Street Investigation for more than two years in the 1990s, reviews a new book on serial murderers Fred and Rose West by the man who brought them to justice.

TEN years on from the conviction of Rose West, currently serving ten life sentences for her part in the Cromwell Street Murders, the former detective who led the investigation has published his own personal account of the events which made this street in Gloucester so infamous.

For the first time we are told the inside story by the now retired Detective Superintendent John Bennett.

This is the true story of how the West's gruesome and evil crimes eventually came to light. It's his own personal account, written in conjunction with a very good friend of mine, BBC Television journalist Graham Gardner, which relates his experiences of leading one of the most harrowing criminal investigations of the 20th century.

And it was an investigation that was high-profile, full of pressures and so many emotions. A strain on all involved and the resources of the police, but also one from which so many lessons have been learned. It was also an investigation that involved many areas across the country because the Wests preyed on vulnerable young girls - some of them girls from broken homes or who had gone missing from home.

One of those areas was north Worcestershire, and in particular Droitwich Spa.

Shirley Hubbard was a 15-year-old schoolgirl who had been on work experience at a department store in Worcester when she disappeared on November 14, 1974, on her way home to Droitwich. West Mercia police carried out a big operation but she continued to be on the missing persons file until her remains were found at 25 Cromwell Street and recovered on March 5, 1994.

She had been the Wests' eighth victim.

It was Shirley's photograph, when I collected it at one of the many press conferences, which really had a profound effect.

Here was a picture of a young and very pretty girl - innocently and happily peering around a tree - with her whole life before her. But it became a life taken away because of the evil that was Fred and Rose West. The book is not just another book about the Wests, and there have been a good number - including Geoffrey Wansell's excellent and factual An Evil Love, but this is indeed a powerful record of what really happened by the one person who knows the true events.

It's also a fitting tribute to a former policeman from the old school, and to other officers on the case, the other organisations who became involved, and also to some of the courageous people who came forward to provide and then give evidence in court.

Rose West was convicted on November 22, 1995 at Winchester where the judge, Mr Justice Mantell, giving sentence - also recommended she should never be released.

l The Cromwell Street Murders (The Detective's Story) - Sutton Publishing (£9.99).