No comments about Media Representations of Myra Hindley.

No comments about For the Love of Lesley: Moors Murders Remembered by a Victim's Mother.

1 comments about Selfish Little : The Annotated Lesley Ann Downey (Peter Sotos, LIMITED ED. SOFTCOVER).

1. Peter Sotos, Selfish, Little: The Annotated Lesley Anne Downey (Void Books, 2004)
   
   Void Books releases its debut book, the sixth collection from America's foremost social critic, Peter Sotos. Now, don't get me wrong when I call this social criticism. This isn't along the lines of the feeble dreck spewed by such ineffectual screwheads as Noam Chomsky. No, this is social criticism from perhaps the only place it can be written with anything approaching validity: the gutter. As any reader of the last five books Sotos has published is well aware, he's seen it all from the underside. And he can't wait to tell you about it.
   
   This is the book's main problem. No, not Sotos' aside to an interviewer that most of the critics want him to move on and cover other ground (to which his response is subdued, and really rather elegant), but that one does expect a book with a subtitle like The Annotated Lesley Anne Downey to have more to do with, well, Lesley Anne Downey. Sotos does address this in a kind of offhand way, mentioning towards the end of Part I that his whole world view is shaped by the dear departed Lesley; still, one thinks a truly obsessive personality would dwell on her a bit more than he actually does. Roughly a quarter to a third of the book's total pages are devoted to Downey. The rest can be related in the most offhand of ways, assuming you take Sotos' statement that she shapes his worldview at face value (something veteran readers are rightly wary of doing); otherwise, you can sit back and enjoy the usual ride, for the most part. Sotos is (and I rush to add this is not necessarily a bad thing) the Dame Barbara Cartland of cultural critics; the names may change, but the song remains the same.
   
   But then, come to think of it, you can say that about Noam Chomsky, too. With a vengeance. Georges Bataille never really got off his subject much, either. Sotos just deals with a more, shall we say, narrow focus.
   
   What makes Selfish, Little different (and worth having, which is quite important given the book's exorbitant cover price; more expensive than any four of his previous books combined) is the same thing that made Special or Tick different. With each book, Sotos reveals another piece of the full puzzle. I'm sure psychoanalysts read every word with breathless abandon, trying to piece together the twisted personality behind the misanthropic sadist. Selfish, Little contains what may be the most surprising revelation of all; Sotos is, in fact, human. (No, I'm not joking. Sometimes you have to wonder, in the same way one has to wonder about Rasputin or Sade.) There is a long passage where he discusses childhood photographs of a girl that, it can be inferred from the passage, Sotos has known since childhood. Did you ever think you would hear words coming off a page authored by Sotos of love? Familial-style protection? To the non-Sotos-inured reader, this may not seem like an earth-shattering revelation. To the few of us who have been around for the past decade or two, it's roughly akin to, for example, Tim LaHaye writing a tell-all autobiography in which he confesses to being the Green River Killer. (Honest, no wishful thinking at all was involved in the crafting of that sentence.)
   
   At a reading in New York in April of 2004, Sotos mentioned to the audience that he has written several more books that are awaiting publication. Not surprising, given the prolificity of his output for a few years, and the three-year-drought ended with this tome. I wasn't there, but secondhand information points to some sort of obscenity controversy. As usual. Which also explains the sixty-five dollar tag on this one (though to their credit, Void did a fantastic job of making it LOOK like a sixty-five dollar limited edition, and as an added bonus had all pre-ordered copies signed by Sotos), presumably. Well, all the devoted reader of Sotosiana can do is hope that it all blows over and we get another rash of fifteen-dollar paperbacks from Creation Books (like the spate that came out in 2000). I don't know about any of the rest, but my wallet can't handle sixty-five bucks a pop and shipping indefinitely.
   
   The discerning Sotos reader will want to pick this up. The Sotos neophyte should not only be scared off by the cover tag, but also by the knowledge that reading his earlier work first is a setup to this one, and reading this one first will deflate its shock value. Excellent as usual, but start with Total Abuse or Special.***

No comments about Trial of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley: Moors Case (Celebrated Trials).

No comments about On iniquity: some personal reflections arising out of the Moors murder trial.

No comments about Myra Hindley: Inside the Mind of a Murderess.

1 comments about The Moors Murders: The Trial of Myra Hindley and Ian Brady.

1. i saw a documentary on the history channel and i wanted to further read about these crimes. there is no doubt this is some heavy stuff, the crimes are deplorable and it is sad that all the victims have not been able to obtain closure because of inability to find bodies and the stunts pulled by the defendants in order to get some kind of cheap thrill by talking the police into letting them be escorted to the moors to "cooperate". this is especially hard to stomach because of the fact the killer/accomplice was a women and i found it especially ridiculous how much compassion she showed towards her dog puppet...the book was informative and stated the facts well however it is slightly outdated

1 comments about Beyond Belief a Chronicle of Murder and Its Detection..

1. Product Description
   The Moors Murders are the most brutal, senseless and cold blooded killings to have occurred in Great Britain in many years. Between November 1963 and October 1965, Ian Brady, clerk, and Myra Hindley, typist, killed at least three--and possibly as many as five-- young people varying in age from ten to seventeen, for no apparent motive. On May 6, 1966 the two murderers were sentenced to life imprisonment (capital punishment has been abolished in England). Beyond Belief, an uncanny feat of re-creation of the minds, hearts, and motivations of the two killers, is the story of this case. In it Emlyn Williams has achieved superbly his objective: "The dual accuracy of hisotry and of imaginative understanding.

2 comments about The Devil and Miss Jones: Twisted Mind of Myra Hindley.

1. Janie Jones was one of the original WINDMILL THEATRE girls and she made a number of pop records in the 1950s and 1960s, including a minor hit called WITCHES BREW, from which it is said Miles Davis derived that repetitive chord that begins BITCHES BREW. You can get a good collection of Jones' greatest hits, on the import LP WE'RE IN LOVE WITH THE WORLD OF JANIE JONES. She later turned to the more lucrative world of prostitution and went to prison, where this book really takes off, because she befriended a notorious child-murdered called Myra Hindley. First she stumbled across Myra's body--Myra had been assaulted and beaten by other prisoners, for everyone in England hated her for the crimes she had committed about 10 years before Jones met her.
   
   Then Myra began confiding in her, and opening up. Well, Jones listened and listened, and sympathized with her, and agreed to help her appeal for parole, joining the venerable Lord Longford in fighting to get Myra freed. But later, when she had time to think about it, Janie Jones changed her mind and wrote this nasty little book. She (Janie) also made a great record with the Clash (UK rock group) who admired her trashy demeanor and limited vocal ability. Look for that, skip this awful book.



2. The Devil and Miss Jones" is little more than a smarmy kiss-and-tell book. Ostensibly it's a biography of Janie Jones, but it's real selling point is how it serves as an exploitation of the fact that the author was friendly with Myra Hindley while serving a prison sentence in Holloway in the 1970s.
   
   It's not a terribly well-written or even interesting book, and it relies heavily on quoted comments from other people as well as lengthy quotations from Myra Hindley's effusive (and rather repetitive) letters and poems as well as her long, rambling appeal to the parole office in 1976 (which was later revealed to be a tissue of lies when she confessed to two other murders in 1986).
   
   Janie Jones' whole take on Myra, the Moors Murders, and life in prison is not very insightful or informative. Most of what she knows about the Moors case is common knowledge - in fact her perspective is rather obvious and naive (and necessarily limited), so much so that it's really no wonder Myra managed to take her for a ride for over ten years. "The Devil and Miss Jones" is basically about how Janie was duped by Myra, and the book is written in the clueless airhead manner of a dupe.
   
   The only interesting bit comes at the end of the book from former prison warder, Pat Cairns, the lesbian who had conspired to spring Myra from jail in a botched (and rather farcical) escape attempt in 1974. Pat explains that, despite being Myra's lover, she never really had an illusions that Hindley was almost certainly guilty of the crimes she was convicted of - and even although Ian Brady probably did influence her behavior, she was still a highly intelligent woman who made her own decisions.

1 comments about Brady and Hindley: Genesis of the Moors Murders.

1. Ian Brady and Myra Hindley; two of the most hated names in British history. Brady was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of two children and a sixteen year old boy. Hindley, convicted on two counts of murder, was also sent to prison for life.
   
   "Brady & Hindley : Genesis of the Moors Murders" draws heavily on a unique series of interviews with Brady, the first such interviews ever given to an author by a mass murderer in his cell.
   
   Brady's claim that Myra Hindley assisted in the killing of sixteen-year-old Pauline Reade and that David Smith, the youth who led the police to the killers, was also involved, led the author into a thorough new investigation of the Moors Murders and their background.
   
   Originally published in 1986, before Brady and Hindley confessed to killing Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett, this specially updated edition (published in 1987) includes extra material regarding these two murders.