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Beyond Belief

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Welsh playwright, author, actor, Emlyn Williams, (1905-1987), the writer of "The Corn Is Green", and "Night Must Fall", and cast in several films including Alfred Hitchcock's "Jamaica Inn" (1939), has confessed to possessing a passion for real life murder. Before penning his classic play of the macabre, "Night Must Fall", he labored over courtroom transcripts of murder trials, and based his first big sucess on a real life murder.

So it is no wonder that his 1968 classic true crime book, "Beyond Belief, A Chronicle of Murder and Its Detection", an account of the infamous child murders in mid 1960's Britain, known as the Moors Murders as two bodies were unearthed on the English moors, is rich in eloquent passages worthy of a poet, while the horrendous crimes are cautiously treated with reverence and a debt of sorrow by a writer who surely knows his way around a corpse.

Between 1963 and 1965, a young working class British couple, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, (he languishes in prison to this day, she died in prison in 2002), killed at least five young people varying in ages from 10 to 17, for apparently no other reason than the sadistic thrill it gave them. Two of the murders were verified after the publication of this book. The children were lured into a car with the promise of a ride home, viciously murdered and buried in the vast lonely English moors. A 17 year old young man was hacked to death in the couple's suburban kitchen.

William's book builds suspense like a thick low fog over the moors with fiction-like writing, rich in rural English colloquialisms that sometimes defy American translation, as he channels the speech patterns and minds of the British working class, and savors the impending doom of quiet English towns and children walking alone at night. So much so that halfway through the book, intrigue and impatience got the best of me and I had to look up the details of the crimes on the internet. And while the first half is like a long slow frightening climb up a roller coaster hill, the second half races frantically downward in startling detail as the police slowly piece together an unlikely scenario that surprisingly brings closure to long lost missing children.

If you enjoy real life crime books, Beyond Belief is especially fine due to the assured writing talent of Williams. Given the horrific details of the crimes, he is trustingly sensitive and shields us from true horrific exposure with an almost Dickensian kindness.

Product Description
The Moors Murders are the most brutal, senseless and cold blooded killings to have occurred in Great Britain in many years. Between November 1963 and October 1965, Ian Brady, clerk, and Myra Hindley, typist, killed at least three--and possibly as many as five-- young people varying in age from ten to seventeen, for no apparent motive. On May 6, 1966 the two murderers were sentenced to life imprisonment (capital punishment has been abolished in England). Beyond Belief, an uncanny feat of re-creation of the minds, hearts, and motivations of the two killers, is the story of this case. In it Emlyn Williams has achieved superbly his objective: "The dual accuracy of hisotry and of imaginative understanding.

I was hoping that there would be pictures whether black and white or color. SOmetimes, the pictures aides in helping me understand the crimes by giving a face to the criminals and victims. I'm not saying that this is a bad book. NO, it's quite fascinating to read but it's slow at times. I prefer reading real crime books and that's why I ordered it second hand. THe writing is interesting and I never heard of Emlyn Williams but he does an excellent job in describing and helping us understand one of the most horrific crimes in recent years. Myra Hindley died in prison while Ian Brady is still very much alive. I think people are generally interested in why a woman would get involved with such unspeakable crimes but then it's not new.