My Life With Murderers

My Life With Murderers: Behind Bars With the World's Most Violent Men by David Wilson

Hardback, 272 pages

Published 21st March 2019 by Sphere

Shelves: crime-thriller-mystery, memoirs-biographies-etc, mental-health, non-fiction, read, read-in-2020

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Description via Goodreads:

Professor David Wilson has spent his professional life working with violent men - especially men who have committed murder. Aged twenty-nine he became, at that time, the UK's youngest ever prison Governor in charge of a jail and his career since then has seen him sat across a table with all sorts of killers: sometimes in a tense interview; sometimes sharing a cup of tea (or something a little stronger); sometimes looking them in the eye to tell them that they are a psychopath.

Some of these men became David's friends; others would still love to kill him.

My Life with Murderers tells the story of David's journey from idealistic prison governor to expert criminologist and professor. With experience unlike any other, David's story is a fascinating and compelling study of human nature.

Professor David Wilson is a relatively well known criminologist here in the UK and if you're interested in true crime, its quite likely that you've seen a documentary or two that he has featured in. I have enjoyed several of his documentaries and so that, alongside my true crime-fascination, inspired me to pick up this book. I'm glad I did!

Although there's nothing particularly groundbreaking or any new revelations in this book, it's a very interesting and worthwhile read. The book covers numerous issues relating to criminology and holds a lot of focus on the prison system and rehabilitation, particularly focusing on how Wilson thinks that the system could improve in order to help prisoners. His insights and opinions seemed fair and well thought through and I respect that he has had a lot of experience in that sector. 

What I found more interesting though was hearing about his experiences with criminals. I was a little disappointed that he didn't, or couldn't, go into more depth with each case, but I found that the little he did reveal quite interesting, if not sometimes surprisingly boastful in tone.

Disappointingly, I found that the book was more about the crimes that these people committed rather than his connection or communication with them - information that I'd imagine would be easy to find online or in other  books or documentaries. I found the book to be more about his research than his actual personal experiences with these people. 

Nonetheless, it was still interesting to read through several different criminal cases and I did keep wanting to read on to find out more. There were also some different aspects of murders and crime that were covered which I haven't read about before, such as analysing 'contract killing' which I found particularly interesting and surprising. 

Overall, this will be an informative and easily accessible read for those who have a fresh interest in true crime. The book covers quite a lot of topics without going into too much depth, allowing the way for the reader to choose their most interesting topics to research in depth later. It was a page turner at points and kept me interested with the diversity of subjects discussed.