Recent Book: A Wicked Crime: Blackmail
| Published date | 01 April 1976 |
| Date | 01 April 1976 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X7604900209 |
| Subject Matter | Recent Book |
RECENT BOOKS
AWICKED
CRIME
MIKE
HE,
WORTH.
Blackmail. Routledge &Kegan Paul. £1.95.
During the war a young woman reflected, and done their best to
running aliterary agency, whom I assuage, the universal appetite for
knew only slightly, phoned me to say juicy stories. Mr. Hepworth's, by
that
one of her clients - a poet, contrast, is economical
and
factual
dramatist and actor - was being
about
the stories (a good many of
blackmailed by a police war reserve which, as it happens, I saw come to
constable with whom he once had Court),
and
is indeed abrief crimino-
ahomosexual relationship. He had logical study, with a real claim to be
already parted with £300, was flat taken seriously, of what is generally
broke, and was begging her for regarded as the most detestable crime
advances on work not yet published in the calendar. His compilation
and
or, I believe, even accepted.
What
on arrangement must have presented
earth could she do for
him?
I said difficult problems, which he has solved
she should tell him to go at once to subjectively
and
(I think) arbitrarily:
the police, who would probably (in for example the decision to classify
the circumstances) abstain from prose- blackmail as compensatory, vengeful,
cuting him on condition that he gave opportunistic, entrepreneurial (what
evidence, which could be anonymous, a word), participantand so on probably
against the blackmailer. She thanked forces the examples he selects into
me profusely and said she would go card-index boxes where some of them
with him. The next I heard was
that
don't
necessarily belong. And there
he was doing nine months' imprison- was no real need to do it. I believe,
ment for gross indecency. too,
that
nearly all his end-notes -
It
comes into my mind every time 22 pages of them - could and should
I see the word blackmail in print, have been
part
of the general text.
accompanied by the hope, in fact the Though they are much better arranged
belief, that during these 30 years the and cross-referenced
than
most peo-
police (or the staff at the
DPP's
office) ple's end-notes (or, as I always see
have grown in humanity. In Mr. Mike them, last-minute chuck-ins), they
Hepworth's useful
book
there is evi- are nearly all interesting
and
impor-
dence that they have. There have been tant and they ought to be
part
of the
many booksabout blackmail but none, "straight
read".
Having said which,
so far as I know, with the serious I warmly commend the
book
to you
purpose inspiring Mr. Hepworth, who as an ingenious
and
readable com-
is Lecturer in Sociology at the Univer- pendium of lessons and guide-lines.
sity of Aberdeen. Most of them have C. H.
ROLPH
UNDER
THE
INFLUENCE
McLEAN
AND
MORRISH:
The Trial
of
Breathalyser Offences. Barry Rose
Publishers, London and Chichester. £3.60.
My heartiest congratulations and of any lawyer's library. This book,
thanks go to the man who conceived devoted entirely to breathalyser offen-
the format for this marvellous series ces, carries on the tradition in admir-
of books by Messrs. McLean and able fashion
and
is to be highly
Morrish. I was far from being alone recommended for attempting to put
in my appreciation of the first two an extremely complicated branch of
books on the Crown
Court
and
the law on a simplified and intelligible
Magistrates'
Court
proceedings, and footing.
the abundance of extremely useful The contents of the
book
are
information they provided in a com- arranged alphabetically from Arrest
pact
and
easily accessible form soon to Special Reasons
and
Statutory
established them as an essential part Warning and although it is quite a
April
1976 133
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