Gitta Sereny: Cries Unheard; The Story of Mary Bell

The ‘true crime’ genre is not one that I have explored in any detail. In itself it has never had appeal except in two situations. Firstly someone whose judgement I respect draws my attention to a book. This was the case with two of this genre reviewed in the main non-fiction section of this site - The Stranger Beside Me and People Who Eat Darkness. But in both these cases, particularly in the latter, there was a fascinating exploration of the nature of the society where the crime took place. In these cases the societies are often very very different to the one that we are familiar with and so this makes the book far more than a mere crime narrative. The other type is one where the crime is just an element of a larger and richer picture of a society or place. Again, for me, the society must be very different to what I am familar with. A very fine example of this was the Krakauer Missoula where the ‘alien society’ was a mid-American college town where the local sports team were the ‘gods’ of the location - and that term is not an exaggeration.

This book though, is very much more than an example of the ‘true crime’ genre. It is a powerful at times heartbreaking account, based on many lengthy interviews that the author had with the killer of two small children, Mary Bell. the degree of painful self-awareness shown by beel and the way Sereny was able to communicate with her (and put everything in its context), remains I think an exemplary example of how to deal with a subject like this.

the full social contect and the failure of support systems (or even awareness of the sort of problems that exist) has not, I suspect, been greatly improved since this event.

A wonderful, powerful, dark book. But SOworht the effort taken to read it.