BY REASON OF INSANITY

Hardback. The illness and the crime of a psychotic murderer. John Balt, who suffered a mental breakdown and killed his wife. He had stabbed her 49 times. This is John Balt's story, told by the one man who knows it: John Balt himself, writing under a pseudonym, once a successful television writer, a loving husband and father...then a brutal murderer...and now a man emerged at last from the nightmare that had become his life. The book moves on two dramatic levels. One is the account of John Balt's descent into madness, a breakdown he suffered during a psychoanalysis he had undertaken in a search for fuller realisation of his human potential. With unflinching honesty the author describes the collapse of his equilibrium as, with growing insight into the darker side of his own character, he lost his hold on sanity. He tells of the beautiful, loving woman who was his victim, and of the crime itself. The other story John Balt tells is that of a man's return from madness. With graphic immediacy, against a background of prison cell, courtroom, and mental institution, he traces the course of his recovery - a recovery slowly and painfully accomplished through the help of loyal friends, an enlightened judiciary, and a dedicated hospital staff. 238pp. 8vo. h/back. From the library of true crime writer, Wilfred Gregg, with his personal b/plate. Lightly browned pp. Vg. in sunned Nr. Vg. dw.