Scene of The Crime

It’s hard to think of Ian Brady as an author. Half of the duo responsible for the notorious Moors Murders, a series of child slayings in 1960s Britain, Brady made his name as a killer. And the dust jacket of his book, The Gates of Janus: Serial Killing and its Analysis (Feral House; 305 pages) publicizes him as a murderer, not a writer.

The Gates of Janus is presented in two parts. The first contains Brady’s take on man’s disposition as it relates to crime. To Brady’s way of thinking, a killer may lurk within us all: therefore, responding to a murderous impulse may simply be being honest to oneself. In the second part, Brady analyzes the perpetrators of 11 serial killings, including American Ted Bundy, executed in 1989 for murdering three women and suspected of slaying over 30 more, and “Yorkshire Ripper” Peter Sutcliffe, imprisoned for murdering 13 women in northern England.

Those looking for remorse from Brady for his own crimes will not discover it in The Gates of Janus. Nor will they find many insights in his lengthy double-speak. Perhaps the real surprise about this book, first published late last year, is that it has sold enough copies to warrant a reprint. Brady holds that the “serial killer is … your alter ego, that facet of character you strive so hard to conceal and repress.” He may believe it; but readers of this ugly, unpersuasive book certainly won’t.