Howard’s end reconsidered

Minette Walters is an unusually uneven writer. Although we know she is just one person it is as though there are two writers taking it in turns to produce the novels. Her last one, Fox Evil, was a histrionic, scrappy affair, while Disordered Minds is far more intriguing, and has characters that seriously engage your interest since what they are, in the wide spectrum of good and evil, is as much at the heart of the mystery as the gradually accumulating evidence.

Two people come together to re-examine the facts that led to the conviction for murder in 1970 of a retarded young man called Howard Stamp. His reclusive aunt, Grace, like him afflicted with a cleft palate, was stabbed to death in her house. She had cuts on her legs and thighs before being dispatched in a frenzied attack. The killer then had a bath to wash off the blood, leaving some ginger hairs behind. Howard, who killed himself while in prison, had ginger hair. The killing caused shock waves in the community and it was a relief when the police arrested her misfit nephew.

At the beginning of the novel aggressively arrogant social anthropologist Dr Jonathan Hughes arranges to meet county councillor George Gardiner at a dubious pub in Bournemouth to discuss the possibility of a book exonerating Howard Stamp of the murder. Gardiner has been trying to reopen the case for years while Hughes has written a paper highlighting it. They, and the reader, are in for surprises when they meet. The meeting starts off badly and with the help of the publican Roy Trent, who was a teenager when the murder took place, ends worse. It takes Jonathan’s literary agent Andrew Spicer’s considerable powers of persuasion to get them back together.