‘One Law for the Rest of Us’
Peter Murphy
Book
launch at Heffers Bookshop, Cambridge
Tuesday 4
December 2018
Report by Jo Hesslewood
In spite
the cold and damp Cambridge evening, a good turnout of local crime fiction fans
(and some from further afield) gathered in Heffers’ pleasantly warm basement
for the launch of Peter Murphy’s latest book in the Ben Schroeder series,
‘One Law for the Rest of Us’.
‘One Law for the Rest of Us’.
Peter, a
familiar visitor to Heffers, gave some background to the series, explaining
that he writes about matters that capture his interest and curiosity. His
interest in the Cambridge Spies resulted in ‘Is There Honey Still for Tea?’ and another area of interest, addiction,
was dealt with in ‘Calling down the Storm’.
‘One Law for the Rest of Us’ considers
some key themes in the world currently. Peter
felt that he had to get to gips with the distressing but unavoidable subject of
child abuse, both in this country and worldwide. In the UK, the historical cases are very much
the legacy of Savile and Peter’s judicial experience (having been a judge on a
number of such cases over an 18-month period) have given him deeper knowledge
and experience than most.
The novel,
interestingly, discusses the idea of traumatic amnesia, the idea of recovered
memory, which has been controversial, but did feature in an actual case. Peter made it clear that he was scrupulous in
ensuring that any ideas that arose from trials were very carefully used and not
traceable. He summed up by referring to
the quote on the back cover, “There is no scandal so serious that trying to
cover it up will not make it worse” (a sentiment that recent high profile enquiries
support).
The photo
shows Peter and Radmila May
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