Reviews

The Wrong Hand by Jane Jago

advcroft's review

2.0

Although this book will keep you turning the pages, I felt it was sensationalist speculation. The author may have wished to explore how society creates and responds to childhood offenders, but the novel is so closely based on the James Bulger case that it is in bad taste. Why mirror these events so closely? Jago could have come up with a clearly fictional vehicle for her novel rather than profiting from real people's pain as one of her characters discusses. Overall this left a very bad taste in my mouth. The most interesting section of the book is when the journalist us researching child killers from countries around the world and we learn about differing attitudes and approaches taken by different societies. This felt like the heart of what the author wanted to explore, but a few pages in an otherwise flimsy book don't justify the use of this case in this way.