Disordered Minds by
Minette Walters
hbk out November 03
Published by Macmillan
at £16.99
Another of Minette Walters' intricate and unconventional novels, written with the
expertise that has gained her so many awards. The unconventional aspects include the use
of many facsimile letters, e-mails and hand-written notes, as well as whole chapter of a
fictional non-fiction book by an anthropologist, complete with footnotes!
The story starts with an account of a gang-rape in Bournemouth of a precocious 13-year
old in 1970, then moves to the 2003 book by London University lecturer Dr Jonathan
Hughes of a murder case in Bournemouth, also in 1970, where a sad young man with a
hare-lip and gross personality defects is convicted of murdering his grandmother and
then kills himself in prison. Dr Hughes alleges that this was a miscarriage of justice and in
his book advertises for any further information. A Bournemouth woman councillor,
'George' Gardener, contacts him and they meet to discuss her similar views on the case.
They do not hit it off, as she discvers that Hughes is a black man, who alleges he is an
Arab, but in fact is part Jamaican, part Chinese. He has his own severe personality
problems, even though he was born in Britain and went to Oxford. His literary agent,
Andrew, is the only mollifying influence on Jonathan, but he has an uphill task.
From then on, the story becomes a complex saga of interviews and investigations, as the
unlikely trio hammer away at the surviving witnesses and families of the victims, of both
the rape and the murder, which they are convinced are linked. All this takes place against
the background of 2003, with the Iraq war jangling Jon's nerves even more, as from the
time he gets back to Heathrow on the day Tony Blair put the tanks there to bolster his
justification for war, people who looked Arabic got a hard time from both police and
immigration tyrants. Minette uses the situation to grind a few of her own axes on the
subject.
When I began the book, I found it hard to 'get into', then became very enthusiastic for the
next three hundred pages. Later on, I slowed down a bit, as I felt that the book, at 423
pages, was rather stretching the story beyond what it could carry, becoming somewhat
repetitive and going round in circles with the endless interviews, statement,
recapitulations and navel-gazing of the main protagonists. But that's just me. There are
plenty of folks, especially those who can do the Times Crossword, who like to analyse
and dissect all the details of time, place, motive and opportunity. And anyway, who wants
to breathe a word against the work of Minette Walters, who not only won this year's
CWA Gold Dagger, but immediately gave the substantial prize to Medicine Sans
Frontieres?
(
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series)
Disordered Minds by
Minette Walters
