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Jonathan Trigell claims that the characters and events in Boy A are fictitious. ‘Any similarity to real persons, dead or alive, is coincidental and not intended by the author’. Nevertheless, many British people who watched the Channel 4 Cuba pictures feature film were struck by the horrible similarity of the story and the situation of Jon Venables, one of the two child murderers of Jamie Bulger.

Boy A is released, at the age of 24, into a world he has been excluded from. He has spent his teenage years in institutions after the shocking murder of a ten-year-old schoolgirl, Angela Milton. Twenty-six chapters, moving from A to Z, take us with him into his new life, new identity, new job and even new girlfriend.

We also live briefly inside Boy B, the evil ‘other’ murderer and witness the horrific experiences of both child murderers in prisons and institutions.

This really is compulsive reading as we move inexorably towards a conclusion we really do not wish to experience with Boy A. The novel tells us, loud and clear, that the media and Internet make it desperately difficult for anyone to step into a new identity. The amazing effect of Trigell’s writing is that, when the media are baying for blood outside Boy A’s window, we have developed empathy and suffer with him.

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