Close and Deadly: Chilling Murders in the Heart of Edinburgh

by Alanna Knight

oIn 1923, Philip Murray went to the gallows for a brutal murder in Jamaica Street, thanks to a local prostitute turning King's evidence. oIn the late 1970s, two girls went missing from the World's End pub never to be seen alive again -case unsolved. oIn the late 1990s a young woman met a terrifying end in South Clerk Street - case unsolved. These horrendous crimes have one thing in common. They all happened in Edinburgh. Edinburgh has a famously blood thirsty history. In centuries past the High Street ran with gore as clansmen battled to the death, and criminals were gruesomely hung, drawn and quartered at the Tolbooth. Lesser known, however, are the terrible crimes that have been committed in the last century. In 1954 Donald Merrett walked free after cold-bloodedly murdering his mother, only to return in the 1970s under an assumed name and kill again. A grim pattern followed by Donald Forbes who, acquitted of a terrible murder in 1958, returned to Edinburgh 40 years later to continue his rein of terror in another death. Edinburgh's Murder Mile offers a fascinating selection of the most notorious murders of the last century within a mile radius of Edinburgh's famous Princes Street.Alanna Knight - one of Edinburgh's favourite crime authors - revisits the crime scenes and unravels the fascinating details of the police investigations, posing new questions and offering a new perspective on famous and lesser known cases. Join her on a chilling, unforgettable trip through the damp, shadowy secrets of Edinburgh's streets.

Genres: Nonfiction

159 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

aka Margaret Hope

Alanna Knight MBE has published more than sixty novels (including sixteen in the acclaimed Inspector Faro series, and seven featuring his daughter Rose McQuinn), as well as non-fiction, true crime and several books on Robert Louis Stevenson, numerous short stories and two plays since her award-winning first book ‘Legend of the Loch’ in 1969. A founding member and Honorary President of the Scottish Association of Writers and of the Edinburgh Writer’s Club, born and educated on Tyneside, she has two sons and two granddaughters and lives in Edinburgh.

Reviews

[N · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ahh, an ‘impulse borrow’ from the library and one that did not live up to even low expectations.

A collection of true crime accounts, Close and Deadly seems strangely disjointed. Ostensibly, the 20 or so ill-deeds described in the book are tied together by the fact that they all took place in Edinburgh. However, there’s no real sense of place inherent in the narrative. Alanna Knight makes scant effort to really evoke the streets, the people and the peculiarities of Edinburgh. There’s certainly nothing else to link together the stories: the cases span more than 100 years; they are variously driven by passion, money, madness.

It’s no exaggeration to say that you could google ‘murder’, read the first 20 newspaper articles you find and you’d have an experience fairly similar to reading Close and Deadly.

It’s true that some of the accounts provide diverting, bitesize mysteries. However, many more are bizarrely overlong – not because they’re complex cases, but because Knight includes superfluous detail. I suspect Knight wrote precisely according to how much research material was available on each case: if there was a lot of material, she wrote a long story; if there wasn’t much material, she wrote a short story. Need I point out that a good researcher should filter and summarize material?

Its research flaws aside, I’m afraid I can’t even say that Close and Deadly is well-written. I felt like this book needed a good copyeditor. Tell me, does this sentence bother you as much as it bothers me?

After a marriage of ten years, they were anxious to have a child and had a baby daughter, Veronica Jane, born in January 1968.

*twitch*

Here, I’ll fix it for you, Alanna Knight:

After a marriage of ten years, they were anxious to have a child. Veronica Jane, their baby daughter, was born in January 1968.

[Don · Rating 3 out of 5]

Documentary reporting of 'chilling murders in the heart of Edinburgh' from early 20th century to more recent times. An interesting read and an essential companion on a murder mystery tour of Scotland's capital city.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book, a very interesting read :)