The death of innocence

The Sleep of Reason: The James Bulger Case by David James Smith Century $195 ON February 12, 1993, a murder occurred in Britain which shocked the world. A two-year-old boy who had wandered away from his mother was abducted from a shopping centre in a town in northern England, stripped, beaten to death and left on a railway line tobe spliced in two by a train. What made this killing even more shocking was that its perpetrators were two boys just 10 years old.

Many columns of newsprint and reels of video tape subsequently dwelled on the horrors that befell the victim, James Bulger. Commentators could not resist seeing the case as an indication of the collapse of British society, an indictment of a once great empire.

Parental discipline, the role of the police, teachers, the courts and the social services were put under the spotlight. What sort of community could breed murderers at such a tender age? Was it not time for a radical re-think of the way children were brought up? Were the boys born bad or made bad? What had gone wrong and how could it be put right? In his first book, David James Smith provides a factual yet gripping account of the events that led up to and followed the murder. In fact, it is so well plotted that I sometimes had to blink in order to remember that it was a real-life horror story rather than a piece of well-executed fiction that I was reading.

The increasing despair of James' mother, the police inquiries, the discovery of the body and the tracking down and nailing of the perpetrators is told in a style which owes more to thriller writing than traditional documentary. This approach is underlined by the author's use of the vernacular to better capture the flavour of events.

I confess there were moments when I felt distinctly uncomfortable dipping so deeply into someone else's private grief. But then, the murder of James Bulger has long become public property. Even this newspaper, the other side of the world from the events,reported developments in the case and devoted a full-page to it once the trial was over.

So what did lead Bobby Thompson and Jon Venables to drag James to a dark and lonely railway cutting, there to inflict a brutal death? Smith, who had access to the investigating police officers, solicitors, some members of the families concerned, the reports of psychologists, media interviews and court transcripts, paints a tragic picture of deprived lives.