The Case of Stephen Lawrence

A little while ago I wrote about Simon Callow's biography of Orson Welles and said that at times it was just too well researched. There was so much detail that I began losing sight of the subject. And so it became something of a struggle to read. Well, this book about the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993, and the subsequent investigation, private prosecution, inquest and public inquiry is just as exhaustively researched, but not for one moment is it ever too much.

It’s calm without being dull, detailed without being overwhelming, and even though it's fairly obvious where the author’s sympathies lie, it is not a polemic against London’s Metropolitan Police. It’s notably even-handed.

Published in 1999, it only goes up to the Macpherson Report and its findings, so there’s nothing about subsequent changes in the UK’s ‘double jeopardy’ law, improvements in forensics that led to new evidence being discovered, or the eventual arrest and imprisonment of two of the murderers. No reason not to read it though. It’s a deeply, deeply impressive piece of work.