The Hampstead murders (fiction)

I've just finished reading the first book in 'The Hampstead murders' series, written by Guy Fraser-Sampson, 'Death in profile'. I thought it would make a change to read a police procedural set 'close to home', or at least, close to where I once lived, although it turns out that most of the action is around the Royal Free hospital, an area in which I didn't spend much time.

The story is about the search for a serial killer who has murdered five women; the book opens with the fifth murder and the case being taken away from the detective who had been running it for sixteen months or so and given to a "fast track" detective who works more by logical reasoning that by a "copper's nose".

The police found a suspect who seemed a good match for the killings, even though almost all the evidence was circumstancial. The defining evidence was found in a public area within the building that contained his flat. Convicted in court, he was killed almost immediately in prison ... just as someone came forward with an alibi for the third murder. Start again.

All the victims had chloroform burns, suggesting that the victims were overcome by this method then killed, but this doesn't seem to be significant until towards the end. I, however, picked up on this immediately, and asked where the chloroform came from. It's hardly something that one can easily obtain, and in fact, it's also not a very good method of making someone unconscious as it takes a few minutes to work. The detectives only started investigating the chloroform about 80% of the way through the book, and this led them to another suspect who seemed also a good match for the killings.

This book differs from most of the procedurals that I have read in that there is discussion with a representative of the DPP and a barrister, discussing the evidence and considering whether it's sufficient; after all, it's all circumstancial.

There was one nice portion in the book that nothing to do with police procedurals that I want to quote here.

“You have to be very careful with words like ‘mad’,” Collison chided him gently. “What is ‘mad’? People like Laing and Foucault said that we live in constant states of ‘fantasy’ as you put it ....

“Foucault?” Leach echoed, staring blankly at Collison. “Didn’t he invent the pendulum or something?”

Collison sighed. “You don’t read much, do you, Andrew?”

“You mean books? No, not really. Who does these days?”

“So how many books do you think you read every year? I’m asking just out of interest, you understand.”

“Well, I take one on holiday with me, and say two or three others.”

“I see,” Collison said thoughtfully as he paid the bill. “So how do you learn things, then?”

“Isn’t that what the internet’s for, sir? Anytime you want to know something, you just look it up.”

“But doesn’t that presuppose,” Collison replied as they started strolling back down the hill towards the police station, “that you know what it is that you’re looking for in the first place?”

“How do you mean, sir?”

“Well, clearly the internet is a fantastic information source but reading is different. With books you learn things, random things, whatever the author might be talking to you about, and you sort of soak them up like a sponge over the years. They are stored away in some dim recess of the unconscious mind until one day some equally random stimulus sparks a connection, and you find that you’ve combined different items of memory and perception into a completely new insight.”

I'm going to add a new tag to the blogs - police procedurals. I think that's betten that having such books tagged as 'literature'.

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