ONCE UPON A MURDER

Hardback. A psychiatrist's fascinating exploration of the fairy tale fantasies of 8 murderers. From the fictions of Christie and Conan Doyle to the real-life events recounted by Capote and Bugliosi, murder holds a bizarre fascination for all of us. Why did it happen? What derangement of the mind led to the perpetration of that ultimate act of violence? The author, a psychoanalyst of many years' experience, provides intriguing insights into the psyche of the murderer. He has been called upon many times as an expert witness at murder trials and spent many hours interviewing murderers in order to determine legal sanity. Here he examines 8 of the cases in which he was involved during the previous 20yrs. He delves deep into the disturbed minds of the people he interviewed in order to reveal the delusional patterns of behaviour that culminated inevitably in murder. We all have favourite fairy-tale characters and at some time we have all imagined ourselves as Peter Pans who would never grow up or as Pied Pipers who could fascinate children. The author shows how all these murderers (names were changed to protect the privacy of those who he felt had suffered enough already) allowed their imagined selves to take over their lives to the point where, in a moment of supreme delusion, they committed the irrevocable crime - murder. Illus. with drawings by Alice Brickner + Appendix and Psychiatric Glossary. 223pp. 8vo. h/back. From the library of true crime writer, Wilfred Gregg, with his personal b/plate. F. in v. sl. sunned Nr. F. dw.