THE DEAD GIRL

Hardback. Roberta Lee, a lovely Berkeley student of unusual promise, went running one November Sunday in 1984 with her lover, Bradley Page. He came back alone. Roberta, sometimes volatile and moody, had run off on her own, he said. When she failed to return, one of the largest missing-person searches in California history was launched. Five weeks later, her battered body was found on a bed of branches in a shallow grave. Within hours, Page had confessed to the murder of Roberta Lee - and then recanted. The story of the dead girl had begun. The author was Roberta's closest friend. She has written a heartbreaking tribute, both elegy and celebration, to her lost friend. In a haunting, many-layered work of striking originality, we experience the horrifying crime at its centre, the agonising search for the body, the trial and its wrenching explosive climax, the sinister and deceptively bland defendant. Illus. 430pp. 8vo. lge 8vo. h/back. From the library of true crime writer, Wilfred Gregg, with his personal b/plate. Vg+ in sl. sunned Vg+ dw. A fairly heavy book which may require additional postage.