Happy Like Murderers

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When I first heard about this book, I was unsure of how this style would work. My feeling was that too much narrative and desription might overwhelm the facts of the case and possibly stumble into the tar-pit of unfounded speculation and outright fabrication in creating some scenes. However I can report that Burn has done an excellent job in crafting this work and manages to illustrate the events rather embroider them. Stylistically, Burn uses the repetition and variations of certain key phrases that sketch in atmosphere and psychological themes. Some readers may find these echoes in the text annoying, but I found them to an elegant device which highlight the progression of the West's crimes, illuminate the links between past and present events, and reiterate recurring impressions and opinions. David Robson writes: I was fortunate to be a friend of Gordon's for nearly 40 years, and as a magazine editor commissioned many pieces from him. He always knew what he wanted to say and how he wanted to say it. Not much editing was required, which was just as well – he didn't take kindly to it. He had a phenomenal eye for telling detail, an acute ear and an unusual ability to get to the truth of a situation. From the start he was clear to the point of truculence about what he was and was not interested in, and over the years he showed such constancy of vision and fixity of purpose that his became a strong and unique voice. He was never middle-of-the-road, and spotted many truths about modern life that others missed.

Gordon Burn | Gordon Burn | The Guardian Gordon Burn | Gordon Burn | The Guardian

Long, brilliant, horrifying ... Burn researched with great care every detail (my God, the detail) of what went on in the Wests' household over decades.' - Libby Purves, The Times Es un libro que me hizo sentir sucia, monstruosa, y a la vez, decente, pues por mas que pueda tener esas ideas en la cabeza, (y de cierta forma es lo que el quería, enfrentarlo a uno con su monstruo interior) realizarlas me parecería una atrocidad. Once Upon a True Crime investigates the real-life murders that inspired some of the acclaimed authors’ most famous novels. Lifers (2016) - Geoffrey Wansell Fred West’s pet name for Rose was ‘cow’. He constantly referred to her as his cow. He called her this for many years. He was always talking about wanting to put her with a bull. ‘I, Rosemary West, known as Fred’s cow ...’ one document recovered from the attic in Cromwell Street begins. And it ends: ‘I must always dress and try to act like a cow for Fred, also to bathe and wash when I am told. Signed Mrs R.P. West.’ Fred would do some cow paintings for Rose, oil-paintings of Jerseys and Friesians, varnish and frame them and hang them in her bedroom. Paintings of cows hanging on the wall at the end of her bed so that every morning, right up to the morning she was arrested on suspicion of murder, they would be the first things the would see.The book scotched the initial suspicions that surround a writer venturing on to such potentially exploitative territory, and allowed him to move on, reflectively and to good purpose, to studies of Fred and Rosemary West, the Moors murderers (fictionalised in his Whitbread-winning novel Alma Cogan, visualising how the singer's life could have gone had she not died in 1966) and even the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. In all of them, as with his books on snooker stars and the Manchester United footballers Duncan Edwards and George Best, he dealt with previously sensationalised subjects in an unsensational way. He had lived in Chelsea for many years but remained close to the north and had recently bought a house in Northumberland. He is survived by his long-standing partner Carol Gorner. There are different types of true crime books. There are the true crime penny-dreadfuls ( Body Dump, Whatever Mother Wants). And there is solid dependable true crime journalism ( The Man with the Candy, Two of a Kind, Columbine). Then there are the personalised accounts by the lawyers involved - they can be great ( Helter Skelter, Defending Gary.) Violence was written into the Wests’ concept of sex – and even of affection – from the beginning. Rose’s father, Bill, began forcing himself on her when she was 13; at one point, he was invited into the ménage at Cromwell Street, and began having sex with Rose’s daughters, using them as he wished, with Fred and Rose’s blessing. Their own sexual life had the essential quality of pornography: the more they acted out their fantasies, the more dissatisfied they became. So what made this book so hard to get through? Although details of the murders are few, there is a lot known about life at 25 Cromwell Road, in the main from the recollections of three of the West's children. For this book, Burn extensively researched and interviewed family, friends and co-workers and has built up a detailed picture of The West's lives - not just the major events but their day-to-day routines over the years. And it is this emerging picture that is so upsetting to read.

Happy Like Murderers: The True Story of Fred and Rosemary Happy Like Murderers: The True Story of Fred and Rosemary

Although it sets out to explore the lives of Fred and Rosemary West – along with Peter Sutcliffe, the most notorious figures in recent British criminal history – Happy like Murderers reads more like a novel than a documentary. In this respect, it recalls Truman Capote’s ‘novel of fact’, In Cold Blood, which made compelling fiction out of the brutal and senseless murder of an apparently typical American family in rural Kansas, and created a new genre on the way. ‘Brutal’ and ‘senseless’ are, of course, the terms customarily used to describe such crimes, part of the mechanism by which a society distances itself from the horror it discovers in its midst; the most common epithets for the perpetrators are ‘monster’ and ‘madman’.

Community strangles. Girls used to be run out of the village because of being pregnant. Their mothers ran them up the Marcle Straight, right out of the village. If a girl was expecting, then she wasn’t wanted in the village. That was another thing that got him with village life: how hypocritical they could be. He had a strong inclination to be private and unobserved. Community throttles.

HAPPY LIKE MURDERERS - Hypnogoria HAPPY LIKE MURDERERS - Hypnogoria

Jeffrey Dahmer did have a precursor in the form of another murderous necrophile jailed less than a decade earlier: Dennis Nilsen. A Very English Scandal (2016) - John Preston What seems to lie at the root of the Wests’ violence is an inability to imagine without enacting. The monotony of their secret life is apparent throughout; it is the monotony of pornography – a mechanical, repetitive quality that leads from arousal to a rage of dissatisfaction: Ocr_converted abbyy-to-hocr 1.1.20 Ocr_module_version 0.0.17 Openlibrary OL7857228M Openlibrary_editionLifers is a fantastic overview of some of the most well-known serial killers. Author Geoffrey Wansell spent over twenty years up close and personal with many notorious names. A chance to get into the psyche of some of these unforgettable criminals, Wansell brings us a fascinating collection of interviews, first-hand accounts and unexpected insights into the minds of the most feared criminals. It’s also a chance to see how behaviours change once they realise that “life means life”. Happy Like Murderers (2019) - Gordon Burn Solo me queda decir que he quedado fascinada y aterrada al terminar de leer este libro. A veces la realidad supera la ficción, y los West son para mí la personificación de toda aquella maldad que vive en nosotros, esa oscuridad que mantenemos oculta y a raya, a la espera de una oportunidad, para cometer los actos más crueles. Solo se necesita una chispa, y el círculo vicioso comienza…