And with the clock ticking towards his possible parole, can Stuart Campbell be convinced to reveal the location of Danielle’s remains? Sharkey's brother didn't run around the house wielding knives; the boys and their sister had a less than idyllic upbringing, but it wasn't brutally hopeless either, thanks to their mum, and until puberty hit the brother seems to have been more or less okay. Of course, this isn't ever a book you could say you enjoyed, purely for the nature of the crime, but it was a captivating read which was well written.

This doesn't really come up until near the epilogue, when the author discovers that the headmaster of the boarding school his brother attended was abusing young boys, and wonders whether Stuart was one of them, or at the very least knew what was happening and was affected by it. Maybe he was, but it just felt like the author crammed the theory in there, and then hoped for the best. Alix has worked as news editor of MTV Europe, written a weekly column for the Independent and more recently studied creative writing at UCLA. Not since Mikal Gilmore’s Shot in the Dark, about his brother Gary Gilmore, have we been forced to examine two very different lives within the same family.

In this piercing and unforgettable memoir, laced with bleak irony and heartrending honesty, Alix tackles these questions and confronts a harsh that the younger brother he once adored not only deceived their own family for decades, but destroyed another with his truly heinous crime. But if you come into this knowing it's an exploration of the crime through the lens of a memoir about the author and his brother, you'll understand in advance what you're getting into. Sharkey's main focus was on his own daughter (and her schoolmates) possibly finding out that her uncle was the main suspect, and what that might mean for Daughter's social life. In December 2002 her uncle, Stuart Campbell, of Grays, Essex, was convicted and jailed for life for her kidnap and murder following a trial at Chelmsford Crown Court. What an insightful book that didn't require the epilogue to tell us just how much it must have taken the author to reach back into the past and rake over his early life with his brother.

I read it as I wanted to understand how you would feel if you found out someone you knew - were related to - had committed a horrific crime. but the marketing and the title means ppl would be misled into thinking this memoir will unearth more about Stuart than what's alrdy in the news. True crime usually tells the story from the point of view of the victim or the perpetrator - this book comes from a different angle. I think that as a journalist you'd need to have a curious nature as well as an inquisitive mind, that need to know spark so I'm surprised that he never checked it out. To access you ebook(s) after purchasing, you can download the free Glose app or read instantly on your browser by logging into Glose.When Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, Kiwi reporter Charlotte Bellis made headlines around the world. Which I guess is only natural, but it also underscored what I felt was a certain shallowness he cultivated in his public persona -- this is someone who is very eager to tell us about his accomplishments (Parisian condo; young girlfriend; lots of money), the parties he went to, his fantastic cool friends, there's a lot of breathless hedonism that's very 1990s. Sharkey had succeeded in getting his jailed brother to open up, I guess, but as it is, this is a tragicomic story that points toward and then runs alongside a tragedy without a resolution, and the mixture makes me uneasy. This book simultaneously reaches into the past in two different time periods, one counting the time since Danielle's disappearance and secondly to their earliest days as brothers and both timelines shine through with an honesty that took my breath away.

Yes, it jumps all over the place in time and place (that didn't bother me, I didn't find it hard to keep up), yes the answers aren't all there, its not all wrapped up in a nice neat bow (that's what makes it real).on Monday 18th June 2001, Danielle Jones left home dressed in her school uniform - and promptly vanished. Stuart’s trial, 15 months after the meeting when Alix realised his guilt, laid bare the depths of his depravity. I enjoyed following along this guided tour of the author's funny/tragic family, but when it came to the events of 2001 I felt a bit icky too, because I was prying into something that was much more massive and unfathomable than Mr. You’re going to hear how she got started and then how you easily declutter your life to make yourself more productive. He regularly picked her up from the school bus stop in his van, sent her 'an inordinate amount of text messages' and kept a diary chronicling his contact with her.