Beyond All Reason: The True Story of Two Ten-Year-Old Killers

In early 1993 in a suburb of Liverpool, England, two truants from school-Jon Venables and Bobby Thompson-lured three-year-old James Bulger from his mother in a shopping mall and, after meandering around the town, killed him in a brutal fashion and left his body on railroad tracks, where a train cut it in half. Smith, who writes for the Sunday Times of London, provides an objective look at the murderers, the authorities who handled the case, the trial and the 15-year sentences handed down by the home secretary, which are currently being appealed. He suggests that the killers, both from dysfunctional families, did not set out to find a murder victim, but that small acts of sadism escalated until death resulted. The police, unrelenting yet solicitous, are shown to have behaved admirably as their questioning solved the crime. An excellent true-crime study that tries to explain why. Photos not seen by PW. (Feb.)