My brother the killer A family story

Twenty years ago, journalist Sharkey was shocked to learn that his brother, Stuart Campbell, was under suspicion for the abduction and murder of his own niece. The 15-year-old girl disappeared in 2001 and has never been seen since. In this this tremendously powerful book, Sharkey's shares his traumatic journey to understand, and then accept, the idea that his brother is a murderer. Sharkey delves into his and Stuart's shared history (their father was a violent alcoholic, and Stuart inherited a tendency toward violence), using that history both as a way to give Stuart's crime some context and as a means of coming to terms with the idea that committing murder was not an aberration for him but, rather, the final step along a dark path that Stuart, currently incarcerated for murder, had been following all his life. Ultimately the book is at least as much about Sharkey himself as about his brother's crime. Writing in stark, raw language, drenched in emotion, Sharkey pulls no punches as he opens all the doors and windows into his life. A haunting piece of crime nonfiction.