Customer Reviews

Death of a Murderer

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Seldom does one read a novel as memorable as this. The prose is pristine, beautiful in its spareness, and the protagonist is incredibly affecting. Billy is, if you will, everyman. An ordinary fellow who through a device employed by the author looks back upon his life, his hopes, regrets, fears and, of course, loves.

Billy Tyler is a policeman, an ordinary one without aspirations for promotion. He's married to Sue, a woman he seems to understand less now than he did when they wed ten years ago. "....here they were, bound together by little more than arguments and tears, by vicious words, by things they didn't even mean." Their only child, Emma, has Down's Syndrome.

One evening a phone call comes - Billy has been assigned to guard the body of one of the most notorious murderers in England until the body is cremated. Her name is Myra Hindley and she has committed the most ghastly killings, even children were tortured before death. Billy is sent to the morgue to make sure nothing happens to the body, that no thrill seekers want a souvenir, a lock of hair, a remnant of clothing. It's not a pleasant assignment - the graveyard shift and he'll be alone.

Sue begged him not to go, to call in sick because he shouldn't be around such evil. He replied that it was his job and so he went to the mortuary, taking his paper work with him, intending to catch up. Instead he remembered. It is through these reminiscences that we learn about Billy's youth, his courtship of Sue, and the difficulties in raising and keeping safe a child with Down's. He emerges as thoroughly likable, one with whom we can empathize, and one for whom we come to care. The aspirations of his younger years have vanished. As he comments, "Life could surge away from you at great speed, leaving you bobbing dumbly in its wake."

The appearances of Myra are not spectral or frightening to him. It is almost as if her were viewing her with detachment. Yet, as he listens to her he realizes that everyone has been harmed by her heinous acts. "We were all damaged by what happened, he thought. We were all changed."

Has that not happened to some of us?

To say that Rupert Thomson is a major talent is an understatement. His writing is electric, concise, and true. This is an amazing story brilliantly written.

- Gail Cooke

This could have been a very different sort of a book, given the set-up. Britain's most notorious criminal is a woman, never named, who together with her lover tortured and killed a number of children in the 1960s. After some thirty years in prison she has finally died of natural causes. The news of her death reopens old wounds: people revile her as much as they ever did, if not more. Her corpse, deep in the bowels of the hospital awaiting removal to a crematorium, requires police protection--from souvenir seakers, from people who would abuse it. Constable Billy Tyler is asked to take the graveyard shift, twelve hours locked alone in the room with a bank of refrigerated drawers--hers unmarked and locked. His wife begs him not to go, as if the corpse contains within it some transferable evil. But of course he can't refuse the assignment. This can't end well, we think.

But this isn't that kind of a book. There may be ghosts in the mortuary, but if so it doesn't matter. Billy is left alone with his thoughts for most of the night, and we are privy to them, so that by the end of his shift Billy's character has been laid bare in spare prose that belies the power of the story. Some of Billy's memories are related to the woman he's guarding: her crimes intersected with his life in surprising ways. But mostly his life is no different from most people's: he's a good man who's done some bad things; he's been happy and loved and miserable and things haven't quite worked out according to plan; he can still feel shame over embarrassments experienced in childhood. He is, in the end, entirely credible.

Death of a Murderer is a quiet read, surprising in its effect. The last scene--the last sentence--a small moment caught in simple prose, will break your heart--in a good way, I think. And it will leave you wondering how he did that, the author, just by putting words together on the page.

-- Debra Hamel

Somewhat reminiscent of Patrick McCabe in his psychological intensity, Rupert Thomson tells the story of a murderer and the policeman who is guarding her dead body until it can be cremated. The unnamed murderer, the most hated woman in the UK, killed five people, three of them children, before dying of natural causes. Constable Billy Tyler, assigned to the hospital mortuary for a twelve-hour, overnight shift to protect the body from the press and the general public, "had no idea, at that point, that he was about to become part of the story."

As Billy settles in for a long night, he reminisces about his own life, the father whom he has met only twice, his problems with his arrogant father-in-law, his sometimes turbulent marriage to Sue, and the difficulties of caring for their only child, a daughter who has Down Syndrome. In carefully described, cinematic episodes, Billy recreates his younger days and his relationship with Raymond Percival, who introduced him to break-ins and thievery and almost killed him as a joke. He thinks about his lovers and his best friend, who was dismissed from the police force after beating a suspect, and while on a break, he meets a South Asian man whose wife is in the hospital awaiting life-threatening surgery.

Soon Billy, a simple man with few ambitions, soon finds himself entering a dream world in which the killer appears and speaks to him, and he begins to explore, superficially, some of life's big questions--what makes a killer, how far people will go for love, the nature of guilt, and, ultimately, the value of life. Through Billy's reminiscences, his repeated visits from the murderer's ghost, and the reality of his duty in the mortuary, the novel achieves high drama, and the reader becomes intimately acquainted with Billy's history, his thoughts, and his perceived similarities with the murderer.

Written in unpretentious language and style, and featuring a main character who is an ordinary man with ordinary hopes and dreams for the future, the novel brings this everyman to life, creating a dramatic portrait of someone at a personal crossroad. Ironically, Billy finds himself learning from the killer. Reinforcing how small the differences may be between the cop and the killer, this dark novel explores familiar territory in new ways, appealing to a wide audience with its psychologically perceptive observations. n Mary Whipple

A woman and her boyfriend killed at least five people in the `60s; three were children. The woman was said to have been watching while her boyfriend abused and tortured children. It was rumored she may have even tortured one herself. Now here decades later she has died in a hospital of natural causes. Because she was a well-known murderer, her body is to be watched by the police until her burial.

Career policeman Billy Tyler has received a call. He is asked to work a twelve-hour shift to watch the body in the morgue. His wife throws a fit and tells him not to go. She is superstitious and believes the evil may be too much to be around. Billy tells her it is his job and everything will be fine.

While working his shift, Billy reminisces about his past. He thinks of old friends and times when he was growing up. He thinks about his ex and then getting married. We learn that they have a special child together, and how hard it is on a marriage. While reminiscing, the dead woman speaks to Billy, asking if he has questions for her. Billy doesn't understand why this woman is talking to him. He thinks maybe he is really tired and is dreaming.

Billy was young when the murders took place. Years later he looked into the case of the woman murderer and her boyfriend. He went so far as to go to the spot where all the bodies were found-except one that hasn't been recovered.

This book was a good read. It sounds like a true crime when in fact its not. I liked the whole book but I think it should of said more about the murderer and her boyfriend. It never mentions names for those two people and no real details of what happened. I had no real feelings towards the murderer because of lack of details about what exactly happened, even though she is supposed to be notorious and was greatly feared.

Armchair Interviews says: Interesting way to introduce Billy's past.

I seem to be alone in not finding this book such a great read. I found the premise itself a little silly -- a policeman must watch over a dead murderer's body because people are still emotional about her crimes -- his wife is upset and convinced there is evil there, although the murderer is dead. All very overblown and unconvincing. The book turns out to be a series of his memories, of childhood and childhood friends, one of whom claims to have been abducted by the murdering couple but escaped. Then there is the conversation with the ghost. The main character is not that interesting, although I did appreciate the parts about his daughter. It wasn't a terrible book, I just wasn't as impressed as everyone else here.

A forty something constable gets assigned to stand guard in the mortuary where the body of a female child molester and murderer is stored awaiting cremation. Despite his wife's plea not to take the assignment, he takes the twelve hour shift. During the shift his memory is let loose and accounts of violence and evil that have touched his life come spewing forth.

The memories start innocuously with just professional ones, but then get more and more personal. The point is that everyone is capable of evil and cruelty, just in varying degrees with self-denial and/or rationalization.

This is not a let's be happy book by any means but a cold hard look at the weaknesses of everyman. I thought the book was only fair until the last twenty per cent or so when the intensity ratcheted up with an old love affair of the constable's and what he did to maintain the relationship.

The bare look inside the head of a "normal" guy and his wife is jarring.

This is recommended, but it is a dark contemplative book; certainly not beach reading. The writing is outstanding. The most poignant part is that as the constable reflects on things he has done, there is nothing that the reader feels he or she would be incapable of doing - a scary thought.

"As he walked, he noticed that he kept looking over his shoulder. He needed to be able to see his car, he realized, and the further he went, the greater this need became. He felt nervous, almost distressed."

Even Billy Tyler, a seasoned policeman, is not insulated from the power a piece of land holds when a victim of violence has lain upon it. Lured by the pull of his curiosity, Billy visited the place where one of the bodies was discovered and found he could not control his thoughts. Some crimes are so unimaginably horrible that the mind struggles to make sense of them. Sometimes looking at a tangible part of it goes a long way toward understanding. Other times it doesn't help at all.

Back in the '60s, a number of tortures and murders was committed by a young couple tied to each other by their sick version of love. Now, after decades of incarceration, the woman has died. If anything, the country hates her more now than when she was alive. Maybe it's because they know that she no longer suffers. Maybe it's because their outrage has not yet run its course. Or maybe it's because they're scared of what love can do to a person.

Billy pulls a 12-hour shift guarding the killer's body from morbid souvenir seekers and overzealous members of the press. He simply views it as a part of his job. His wife views it as a horrific assignment that Billy will not survive. She is convinced that the woman's evil was so overwhelming that some of it remained after her death, and Billy risks being overcome by it during his long night in the same room. Billy waves off his wife's worries. But in the morgue, he starts to have strange sensations and disturbing memories. He remembers what he did for love. Long ago. And more than once. The murderer's ghost talks to him, prods him, even taunts him, almost as though she were listening in on his thoughts.

With time on his hands, Billy can't help but wander down memory lane, in part due to the stories he has heard of the killing spree. As a young man, he had his own outlaw experiences, which he now seems compelled to revisit and analyze. Some are fond recollections, just a kid acting out. But others... He thinks of a time his daughter Emma, afflicted with Down's syndrome, nearly drove him to the brink of violence. Emma, so sweet yet so maddening. As frightening to him, his wife admits to similar thoughts. Was the killer really so different from anyone else? Aside from acting on urges most people suppress, could she have been just like any number of people walking along the street? Merely a human being with human weaknesses, giving into her desires? A young woman in love, doing everything she possibly could to please her lover? Maybe that's what scares Billy most. Will his shift never end?

DEATH OF A MURDERER isn't so much a mystery as a catalyst to honest introspection. Reading where Billy's mind takes him spurs one to think about events in one's own life that, but for the intervention of a sane hand, could have spiraled into tragedy. This novel will quietly prod you to wonder what might have been. Its message is strikingly powerful, as is its stunning writing.

--- Reviewed by Kate Ayers

Unlike today, when Myra Hindley and Ian Brady committed their terrible acts 40 years ago, it was highly unusual for children to be preyed upon, and thusly they became the most despised inhabitants of the British penal system which had abolished capital punishment shortly before their trials. Their in-court demeanor which displayed neither remorse nor sorrow only added fuel to the public's hatred of this horrible pair, which continues to this day even following Hindley's death several years ago. Thomson takes this as a starting point, creating a page turner with an all too human protagonist at its center. Highly recommended.

Thomson got his inspiration for this story from the dreadful Moors Murders near Manchester, England circa 1963-65. The killers, a man and a woman, were captured, convicted, incarcerated for life.

She died 5 years ago in prison, still despised by the British public. Thomson's fictional female child killer has just died as the story begins. A cop named Billy is ordered to sit in the morgue and guard her body.

This allows Thomson the opportunity to follow Billy's thoughts as he babysits this horrible corpse. He thinks about the things that he has done. He looks at the path he took through life, how fate might have led him into evil too. He falls asleep and dreams that he is talking to her, the murderess.

What a lovely read! Thomson is a tremendous talent. Check out all of his stuff. You won't regret it.

I felt a strong theme throughout this book was 'fathers', and their strong influence on their children:
Billy's neglectful father, a past girlfriends abusive father, a neighbour whom Billy looks upon as a father figure, his wife's sneering and contemptuous father and his own roll as father to Emma who has Downs Syndrome. This is also bourne out in his 'conversation' with Hindley who doesn't want to talk about her moody and violent father and even the film he and Sue saw in Amsterdam was 'In The Name of The Father'.

He spends his shift guarding the notorious child killers body and his mind drifts to his relationships and experiences in life that have made him who is. I liked the concept and can't agree enough on how influential a father can be in their child's social and emotional development - this isn't an excuse for people who've had bad relationships with their fathers, to use to behave unacceptably. But does question whether rejection/abuse/neglect effects our relationships both growing up and throughout life.

The ending felt a bit of an anti climax, yet I can appreciate it's subtlety as Billy see's his role as Emma's daddy one that will over ride his previous experiences.
Overall an interesting book, and one worth reading, but not one I would rave about.