Minette Walters, Disordered Minds

Disordered Minds

Minette Walters

Berkley, Dec 2004, $10.00, 544 pp.

ISBN: 0425199355

In 1970 Bournemouth, Dorset, the public is upset with the brutal murder of fifty-seven-year-old Grace Jefferies that is so reminiscent of the Manson clan. A few days later, the police announce that Grace's bizarre twenty-year-old grandson Howard Stamp confessed after being held for questioning for thirty-six hours. A year later, a jury convicts Howard. While incarcerated Howard was abused by his peers until less than two years after his conviction he committed suicide.

Three decades later, sexagenarian councilor George Gardener believes that Stamp was guilty of being retarded and different and never killed his grandmother. Gardener has uncovered evidence that he feels might posthumously exonerate Stamp, but the justice system is satisfied with the neat ending. Gardener learns that thirty-something-year-old anthropologist Dr Jonathan Hughes is researching case studies for a book Disordered Minds that he is writing that includes a chapter on Stamp. Gardner thinks he has an ally who might awaken the public that a travesty occurred. However, will the academic risk his reputation on a dead loner who in many ways reminds him of his own childhood that he prefers to forget?

This is an exhilarating thriller that makes the key players seem genuine by selectively providing "chapters" from Hughes book. The storyline is action-packed as Gardner makes his case while Hughes wants to hide from the evidence because his own could have easily paralleled that of Stamp. He begins to believe the real killer lurks waiting to murder again. Readers will be hooked from start to finish wondering if Gardener is right or just soothing his soul for failing at defending his client.

Harriet Klausner