Disordered Minds - Softcover

Walters, Minette

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1405034173 ISBN 13: 9781405034173

Publisher: MACMILLAN, 2003

Synopsis

When people are frightened, there's always a presumption of guilt if your face doesn't fit ...' In 1970 Howard Stamp, a retarded twenty-year-old, was convicted on disputed evidence and a retracted confession of brutally murdering his grandmother in her Dorset home. Less than three years later he was dead, driven to suicide by self-hatred and relentless bullying by other prisoners. A fate befitting a murderer, perhaps, but what if he were innocent? More than a quarter of a century later, anthropologist and author Jonathan Hughes re-examines Stamp's case for a book on injustice. His research leads him to believe that Stamp was wrongly convicted. But is the previously forgotten story of one friendless young man compelling enough to make Hughes leave his ivory tower in order to champion justice for someone he never knew? Under pressure from a local councillor, who lives on the street where Stamp's grandmother was killed, Hughes takes up his research again. George Gardener has been trying to bring Stamp's case to public attention for years and has unearthed new evidence that might exonerate him. But Gardener needs the young academic on board if it is to be us.

About this title

About the Author

Minette Walters is the Edgar Award-winning author of six previous novels of intrigue, most recently The Breaker. Walters won the Crime Writers’ Association John Creasey Award for the best first crime novel in 1992, with her debut novel The Ice House. Rapidly establishing a reputation as one of the most exciting crime novelists writing today, her second novel, The Sculptress, was acclaimed by critics as one of the most compelling and powerful novels of the year and won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for the best crime novel published in America in 1993. In 1994, Minette Walters achieved a unique triple when The Scold’s Bridle was awarded the Crime Writers of America Gold Dagger for best crime novel of the year. Her following novels, The Dark Room and The Echo, were also published to further critical acclaim and international best-selling success.

Walters work has been translated into thirty-two languages and adapted for television. Her first five novels have been adapted for BBC Television with huge success. She has worked as a magazine editor, and is now a full-time writer.

From Publishers Weekly

Bestseller Walters (Fox Evil, etc.) delivers another complex tale of murder and deception. In 1970, 20-year-old Howard Stamp is convicted of brutally killing his 57-year-old grandmother with a carving knife; three years later, he commits suicide in prison. In 2002, London anthropologist Jonathan Hughes includes the Stamp case in his book, Disordered Minds, which examines infamous miscarriages of justice. The mentally slow Stamp may have been coerced into confessing to the murder. George (Georgina) Gardener, an elderly councilor living in Stamp's hometown of Bournemouth, has come to believe in Stamp's innocence herself and asks Jonathan for help in clearing the young man's name. The two get off to a rocky start, but they form an uneasy alliance that gradually grows into a deep friendship. Watching this relationship develop is one of the novel's more entertaining aspects. Walters uses to good effect the multiple viewpoints of her numerous characters, as well as flashbacks, letters, newspaper articles and e-mails to reveal the truth behind the decades-old murder. However, as in life, there are no easy answers, and although the ending may disappoint some, it caps perfectly all that has come before it.
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About this edition

• Publisher: MACMILLAN
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1405034173
• ISBN 13: 9781405034173
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 432