Rough-and-tumble justice

True-crime author, Gary C. King, has written an instant take for John Blake Publishing on the Kercher killing, called The Murder of Meredith. Such a Penny Dreadful-style rush to bring gory details to a baying readership seems premature at best and callous at worst. The ink isn't even spilt on a definitive judgment for Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, with appeals pending, and the Kercher family's dignified press conference deserves the reward of privacy not mass exploitation.

What bothers me most about these rapid sprints to publish is the possibility of wrong verdicts: it's a lynch mob mentality. For example, had publishers rushed to sign up condemnations of the accused in the Rachel Nickell murder case, they would be laying themselves open to libel charges. Only by waiting for the dust to settle in the Nickell case gave publishers (John Blake Publishing, incidentally) the correct perspective of police coercion and incompetence mixed with compensation for a man wrongly fingered by the original investigation.

Instant books filling the vacuum after a trial won't get read by the likes of Knox, Sollecito or the Kercher family, but I'm uncomfortable with businesses making a fast buck from high-profile tragedy. And the damaging effect on the psychological health of victims, criminals (whether guilty or not guilty) is palpable, as such books help to fossilise opinion at the level of the lowest common denominator.

What chance have any of the players in the drama got when trying to move on with their lives, after a verdict or a prison release, short of assuming a new identity (e.g. Mary Bell, Maxine Carr, Robert Thompson and John Venables)? There is never any closure, and the press or the mob is always waiting.