Book review: You Could Do Something Amazing With Your Life [You Are Raoul Moat]

IT’S a skilful writer who can weave together the last days of an infamous murderer and his high-profile manhunt without resorting to shock tactics or, even worse, reducing the severity of the crimes committed.

Andrew Hankinson

Scribe, €16.50;

ebook, €.65

However, in his short novel, You Could Do Something Amazing With Your Life [You Are Raoul Moat], Andrew Hankinson pulls this off.

Using media and police reports, interviews and Moat’s own testimonies, Hankinson challenges us to look beyond what we know of the 2010 manhunt.

The hunt and standoff saw Moat shoot and injure his former partner Samantha Stobbart, kill her new boyfriend Christopher Brown, and blind police officer David Rathband, who later killed himself.

Although there is no rewriting the horror of Moat’s crimes or diminishing the pain his actions have caused, Hankinson’s deft storytelling injects some humanity into a sad, sad story.