Death of a Murderer

by Rupert Thomson

Book Overview

After decades in prison for crimes gruesomely familiar to everyone in England, a murderer has finally died of natural causes, no less notorious in death than she was in life. Billy Tyler, a career policeman, has been assigned the task of guarding her body in the hospital morgue. But alone on a graveyard shift his wife begged him not accept, Billy has occasion to contemplate the various turns his life has taken and to discover why it is that on this...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0307278743
• ISBN13: 9780307278746
• Release Date: August 2008
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.3" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Entirely credible portrait of a life

This could have been a very different sort of a book, given the set-up. Britain's most notorious criminal is a woman, never named, who together with her lover tortured and killed a number of children in the 1960s. After some thirty years in prison she has finally died of natural causes. The news of her death reopens old wounds: people revile her as much as they ever did, if not more. Her corpse, deep in the bowels of the hospital awaiting removal to a crematorium, requires police protection--from souvenir seakers, from people who would abuse it. Constable Billy Tyler is asked to take the graveyard shift, twelve hours locked alone in the room with a bank of refrigerated drawers--hers unmarked and locked. His wife begs him not to go, as if the corpse contains within it some transferable evil. But of course he can't refuse the assignment. This can't end well, we think. But this isn't that kind of a book. There may be ghosts in the mortuary, but if so it doesn't matter. Billy is left alone with his thoughts for most of the night, and we are privy to them, so that by the end of his shift Billy's character has been laid bare in spare prose that belies the power of the story. Some of Billy's memories are related to the woman he's guarding: her crimes intersected with his life in surprising ways. But mostly his life is no different from most people's: he's a good man who's done some bad things; he's been happy and loved and miserable and things haven't quite worked out according to plan; he can still feel shame over embarrassments experienced in childhood. He is, in the end, entirely credible. Death of a Murderer is a quiet read, surprising in its effect. The last scene--the last sentence--a small moment caught in simple prose, will break your heart--in a good way, I think. And it will leave you wondering how he did that, the author, just by putting words together on the page. -- Debra Hamel

Strikingly powerful message, stunning writing

"As he walked, he noticed that he kept looking over his shoulder. He needed to be able to see his car, he realized, and the further he went, the greater this need became. He felt nervous, almost distressed." Even Billy Tyler, a seasoned policeman, is not insulated from the power a piece of land holds when a victim of violence has lain upon it. Lured by the pull of his curiosity, Billy visited the place where one of the bodies was discovered and found he could not control his thoughts. Some crimes are so unimaginably horrible that the mind struggles to make sense of them. Sometimes looking at a tangible part of it goes a long way toward understanding. Other times it doesn't help at all. Back in the '60s, a number of tortures and murders was committed by a young couple tied to each other by their sick version of love. Now, after decades of incarceration, the woman has died. If anything, the country hates her more now than when she was alive. Maybe it's because they know that she no longer suffers. Maybe it's because their outrage has not yet run its course. Or maybe it's because they're scared of what love can do to a person. Billy pulls a 12-hour shift guarding the killer's body from morbid souvenir seekers and overzealous members of the press. He simply views it as a part of his job. His wife views it as a horrific assignment that Billy will not survive. She is convinced that the woman's evil was so overwhelming that some of it remained after her death, and Billy risks being overcome by it during his long night in the same room. Billy waves off his wife's worries. But in the morgue, he starts to have strange sensations and disturbing memories. He remembers what he did for love. Long ago. And more than once. The murderer's ghost talks to him, prods him, even taunts him, almost as though she were listening in on his thoughts. With time on his hands, Billy can't help but wander down memory lane, in part due to the stories he has heard of the killing spree. As a young man, he had his own outlaw experiences, which he now seems compelled to revisit and analyze. Some are fond recollections, just a kid acting out. But others... He thinks of a time his daughter Emma, afflicted with Down's syndrome, nearly drove him to the brink of violence. Emma, so sweet yet so maddening. As frightening to him, his wife admits to similar thoughts. Was the killer really so different from anyone else? Aside from acting on urges most people suppress, could she have been just like any number of people walking along the street? Merely a human being with human weaknesses, giving into her desires? A young woman in love, doing everything she possibly could to please her lover? Maybe that's what scares Billy most. Will his shift never end? DEATH OF A MURDERER isn't so much a mystery as a catalyst to honest introspection. Reading where Billy's mind takes him spurs one to think about events in one's own life that, but for the intervention of a sane hand, could have spiraled in

HIS WRITING IS ELECTRIC, CONCISE, AND TRUE

Seldom does one read a novel as memorable as this. The prose is pristine, beautiful in its spareness, and the protagonist is incredibly affecting. Billy is, if you will, everyman. An ordinary fellow who through a device employed by the author looks back upon his life, his hopes, regrets, fears and, of course, loves. Billy Tyler is a policeman, an ordinary one without aspirations for promotion. He's married to Sue, a woman he seems to understand less now than he did when they wed ten years ago. "....here they were, bound together by little more than arguments and tears, by vicious words, by things they didn't even mean." Their only child, Emma, has Down's Syndrome. One evening a phone call comes - Billy has been assigned to guard the body of one of the most notorious murderers in England until the body is cremated. Her name is Myra Hindley and she has committed the most ghastly killings, even children were tortured before death. Billy is sent to the morgue to make sure nothing happens to the body, that no thrill seekers want a souvenir, a lock of hair, a remnant of clothing. It's not a pleasant assignment - the graveyard shift and he'll be alone. Sue begged him not to go, to call in sick because he shouldn't be around such evil. He replied that it was his job and so he went to the mortuary, taking his paper work with him, intending to catch up. Instead he remembered. It is through these reminiscences that we learn about Billy's youth, his courtship of Sue, and the difficulties in raising and keeping safe a child with Down's. He emerges as thoroughly likable, one with whom we can empathize, and one for whom we come to care. The aspirations of his younger years have vanished. As he comments, "Life could surge away from you at great speed, leaving you bobbing dumbly in its wake." The appearances of Myra are not spectral or frightening to him. It is almost as if her were viewing her with detachment. Yet, as he listens to her he realizes that everyone has been harmed by her heinous acts. "We were all damaged by what happened, he thought. We were all changed." Has that not happened to some of us? To say that Rupert Thomson is a major talent is an understatement. His writing is electric, concise, and true. This is an amazing story brilliantly written. - Gail Cooke

a haunting character study

After decades in prison as the worst female serial killer in England's history, the murderess has died but not to satisfaction of the families of her victims; many believe justice failed as this deadly femme fatale, "Britain's most hated woman", died from natural causes. Police officer Billy Tyler volunteers to watch over the corpse because he assumes this is an easy assignment although he is told by his superiors to remain vigilant as many would like to mutilate the body. Twelve hours baby sitting a dead female in a hospital morgue before she is cremated seems a perfect way to earn easy money to the lazy Billy even after his spouse Sue begged him to not take this assignment. As the clock slowly ticked away during the long night, Billy begins to self reflect on his life. He has marital troubles and thinks of Emma, a Down syndrome child. Soon Billy and the ghost of this dead killer debate evil as she insists it is part of humanity's internal makeup with civilization trying to control it. She admits most of her victims probably did not deserve death but she lured and killed them nyway. As the clock moves on, Billy believes he lost the argument as this easy over night jaunt proves disturbing as he reflects on keeping loved ones safe from predators when we are the monsters. Apparently based on a real murderess, DEATH OF A MURDERER is a haunting character study that will have the audience reflect on the same questions that begin to disturb Billy. How does one keep loved ones safe from random act killing fields caused by psychopaths? Just who is the monster and how did they become so malevolent that drive by shootings of innocent people including babies is a competitive game. Rupert Thompson provides one of the most insightful thrillers of the last few years with this cerebral look at society breeding the monsters that lie amongst us as we just as easily could have been them. Harriet Klausner

a matter of life and death

Thomson got his inspiration for this story from the dreadful Moors Murders near Manchester, England circa 1963-65. The killers, a man and a woman, were captured, convicted, incarcerated for life. She died 5 years ago in prison, still despised by the British public. Thomson's fictional female child killer has just died as the story begins. A cop named Billy is ordered to sit in the morgue and guard her body. This allows Thomson the opportunity to follow Billy's thoughts as he babysits this horrible corpse. He thinks about the things that he has done. He looks at the path he took through life, how fate might have led him into evil too. He falls asleep and dreams that he is talking to her, the murderess. What a lovely read! Thomson is a tremendous talent. Check out all of his stuff. You won't regret it.