Annal:1998 Gold Dagger Award for Nonfiction
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Dagger Award in the year 1998. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
- Gold Dagger Award for Nonfiction
- Nonfiction books
- Nonfiction authors
- Mystery/Suspense books
- Mystery/Suspense authors.
Cries Unheard: The Story of Mary Bell
- 1998 Dagger-Nonfiction winner
- Score: 10.48
What brings one child to kill another? In 1968, at age eleven, Mary Bell was tried and convicted of murdering two small boys in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. Throughout her coverage of the sensational trial, Gitta Sereny never believed the characterizations of Bell as the incarnation of evil, the bad seed personified. If we are ever to understand the pressures that lead children to commit serious crimes, she felt, only those children, as adults, can enlighten us.
Twenty-seven years after her conviction, Mary Bell agreed to talk to Sereny about her harrowing childhood, her two terrible acts, her public trial, and her twelve years of imprisonment. Her devastating story forces us to ponder society’s responsibility for children at the breaking point, whether in Newcastle, England, or Littleton, Colorado.Find it:
