Almost everyone is interested in murder, in theory if not in practice, and literature would be quite at a loss without it. Suppose, for example, that Hamlet’s father had died of old age, or Banquo of a pulmonary embolus; one cannot help but feel that the subsequent drama would have been rather less compelling.
In my time as a prison doctor I have met quite a few murderers, one or two of them world-famous in their field; and I have found that anecdotes of such murderers, suitably anonymized of course, seldom go amiss at dinner parties when conversation flags. Indeed, they seem to revive flagging appetites also, for there is nothing like a nice asphyxiation to go with a crème brûlée.
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