Children Who Kill by
Carol Anne Davis
pbk out April 04
(Allison Busby)
at £6.99
Although she remains best known for her fiction, Carol Anne Davis is developing a
separate reputation as an author of insightful studies of 'true crime'. Her previous
foray into this field, 'Women Who Kill', earned a good deal of acclaim and her latest
non-fiction study is equally absorbing. In her preface, the author emphasises that the
ingredients of murders by young people are usually very similar: 'the child is
physically and emotionally abused by an adult or adults, often the very people that
created them. In turn, he – or she – goes on to perpetrate violence on someone else.'
She opens with a couple of profiles of historic cases, involving Jesse Pomeroy and
William Allnutt, making the point that 'children who kill aren't a modern
phenomenon brought about by horror videos or single parent family.' After that, she
examines a wide range of modern cases, including not only the depressing and
familiar stories of Mary Bell and Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, but also many
others that are much less widely documented. There is also a section devoted to the
case of Stephen Downing, much in the news at the time of publication as a result of
the Derbyshire police force's controversial conclusion that, despite Downing's release
from prison following a miscarriage of justice, there is no other serious suspect. It is
fair to assume that more will be written about that particular case in the future.
Meanwhile, Davis has produced a serious and sensitive account of a topic which is,
surely, among the bleakest imaginable.
(
Martin Edwards
- author of the highly acclaimed Harry Devlin Mysteries)
Children Who Kill by
Carol Anne Davis
