My Brother the Killer: A Family Story

Product Information

Funny enough this is a hard review to write. I remember reading about Danielle Jones going missing in the papers and seeing it on the news, recently I heard it again recently on a podcast. I can't begin to imagine how the families have coped over the past 2 decades, Each time it resurfaces in the media or as in this case a new book it must feel like a plaster being ripped off for both families..

I read it as I wanted to understand how you would feel if you found out someone you knew - were related to - had committed a horrific crime. It certainly delivered in this regard; the book shows the authors evolving emotions from confusion, to disbelief, to anger, and then to understanding (the cause - his brother's own history of being abused) - whilst never reaching forgiveness and retaining contempt at the pain he put his victims family through. If the author wasn't being offensive, he was writing about things that didn't matter. He would constantly talk about how the case affected him, despite the fact that Danielle Jones lost her life and her body has never been recovered. He talked about how the trial affected him, and how he didn't know who to cry for. Himself, or Danielle? Never heard of this crime story before, although it was much in the news (in the U.K.). Not an easy book to read because of the content, but it does have a coherent flow. The brother in the title is somewhat of a mystery, an enigma, so the book is really about the family. Essentially it is a memoir about the author and growing up in a rough neighbourhood outside London, with an alcoholic father, and then later dealing with the revelation that his brother has been accused of abducting and killing a 15 year old girl (and to make the story even worse, the accused is the girl's uncle).At 8.00am on Monday 18th June 2001, Danielle Jones left home dressed in her school uniform – and promptly vanished. May be spoilers. One particularly upsetting element for everyone involved is that the girl's body has never been located. The convicted killer refuses to help. Understandably, this is an ongoing open wound for all the families touched by this tragedy. The author does a good job of detailing their family history, with the early years’ chapters interspersed with later year ones featuring information from around the time Danielle went missing and the subsequent trial. Their childhood didn't sound like a particularly happy one, suffering physical and emotional abuse at the hands of their father. It is to be wondered though, as you read, where it all went wrong - what happened to Campbell to make him become a child killer? Are you born with those tendencies or is it due to socio-economic factors (lifestyle, education, upbringing), and if so why didn't both brothers end up going down the same path? The author has recounted their past well, although the switching of the timeframes throughout the first half of the book did slow up the story of Danielle's disappearance for me. The recollection from the half way point onwards was interesting though and I found the information given throughout the trial gripping. A memoir heavily focused on a crime committed by the author's brother, I found this to be a tremendous work, and impossible to put down. The author Alix Sharkey jumps between two time periods in the past, examining his childhood and young adulthood, and then focusing on the moments immediately before and after the murder of 15-year-old Danielle Jones, for which Sharkey's brother – the girl's uncle – was ultimately convicted. I think in talking about their past, Sharkey deftly describes why both he and his brother ended up with the problems they had in early adulthood, but without excusing any of his brother's behavior, musing near the end that if their childhood caused his brother to murder a teenage girl, wouldn't he be right there in prison with him? This was... interesting. A very smooth read, for better or worse -- there was a certain glibness to the prose at times, which, combined with the fact that this is basically a memoir, gave me the impression that Mr. Sharkey only told as much as he felt comfortable with or able to, while there were other layers to the story that were not delved into. Which I guess is only natural, but it also underscored what I felt was a certain shallowness he cultivated in his public persona -- this is someone who is very eager to tell us about his accomplishments (Parisian condo; young girlfriend; lots of money), the parties he went to, his fantastic cool friends, there's a lot of breathless hedonism that's very 1990s. Which is fine, especially considering the precarious conditions he grew up under (power to him to make it out of there), but it feels a bit weird to hear him talk about the missing Danielle and her family in between the bits about his crazy French life and whatever else he had going on; it's not like he knew the missing girl, or her family, beyond meeting them once at a family wedding, so the whole "poor Danielle; her parents must be going through hell" bit feels a bit hollow.

A family can hold many secrets. Sometimes, a secret is just something that happened and is never mentioned again. I'm not sure I can say I enjoyed reading this book - purely because of the nature of what this book is about. However it was super interesting, and the idea of nature vs nurture was a strong theme within this book - particularly with the final couple of chapters. (i won't say more in case it's a spoiler)

True crime usually tells the story from the point of view of the victim or the perpetrator - this book comes from a different angle. Alix Sharkey, is Stuart Campbells brother. In this book, which covers a dual time line, the events of Danielle's disappearance and subsequent investigation and Stuart's childhood in an attempt to find out what makes a killer. This is a case that I didn't think I knew, until I searched up the crime online, and I remember it being such a high profile case. What makes this book so special is that Alix doesn't cast himself as a wider victim, although I would disagree on some levels, but nor does he minimise the brutal childhood the boys shared. He shares his story, his fears that he shares his brother's, and father's, DNA and it is so easy for someone outside the story to truly understand how large those fears must loom. By writing the book in a way that avoids sensationalising poor Danielle's murder and focussing the story on the facts, the story is far more powerful than almost any other true crime portrait I have read by a relative of the perpetrator. Stuart Campbell was a healthy, happy child but I think at some point the alluded to event did happen in turn this changed him, he became harder, more secretive. Although it didn't make it the person he became there's opinions that it could have contributed to it. Stuart was Danielle's 'Uncle', someone that Danielle should have been able to trust. It's believed that he abducted her and ultimately murdered her, but Stuart has never publicly admitted guilt or had the decency to tell the family where Danielle's body is. It seems unbelievable that he could keep that deviant and violent side of himself a secret so well and for so long, bearing in mind that he served 2 previous prison terms.

This book simultaneously reaches into the past in two different time periods, one counting the time since Danielle's disappearance and secondly to their earliest days as brothers and both timelines shine through with an honesty that took my breath away.

Of course, this isn't ever a book you could say you enjoyed, purely for the nature of the crime, but it was a captivating read which was well written. I was particularly interested in the forthcoming parole hearing due at the end of this year, especially with 'Helen's Law's now in force, meaning cases where the location of a body is never disclosed a parole review is likely to be denied - no body, no parole. The author has done really well to not make the book all about himself or his brother, voicing his concerns on many occasions throughout the book of the anguish and upset Danielle's family are still going through. Alix Sharkey is the older brother of Stuart Campbell, the man convicted in 2002 of murdering 15-year-old, Danielle Jones. Danielle's body was never found, and the author wrote this book in the hope his brother would finally do the right thing and reveal where Danielle's body is before his parole hearing scheduled for later this year. In 2001, 15 year old Danielle Jones vanished on her way to school. In 2002, Stuart Campbell, Danielle's uncle, was convicted of her murder. Her body has never been found. Especially since he's not even around -- his daughter lives hundreds of miles away in another country, and Mr. Sharkey is basically Fun Dad who pops over every now and then. The Danielle chapters IMO had a bit of "me me me" to them ("OMG that was MY brother, what does that mean for ME, what if the press find out that he's related to ME, what do I do now", etc. etc.), and Daughter seemed to function almost as an extension of the author.