Winner of the Northern Writers Award
Andrew Hankinson is a journalist who was born and lives in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He started his career as a staff writer at Arena magazine. He is now a freelance feature writer who has contributed to many publications including The Guardian, Wired, and The Huffington Post.
‘Immersing the reader in Moat's self-justifications, You Could Do
Something Amazing With Your Life [You Are Raoul Moat] is both
an experiment in empathy and an exploration of the limits of
empathy – holding the reader hostage in the echo chamber of an
angry and confused man's head.’
*Louis Theroux*
‘Brilliantly written … Smart literary non fiction.’
*Jon Ronson, author of The Psychopath Test*
‘The media love the idea that a killer’s mind is somehow
“impenetrable”, because it gives them carte blanche to fill it up
with their sensationalised bullshit … This book does the
commendable job of demystifying evil yet again, and showing us the
rainy-Tuesday-afternoon-dullness and grinding frustration that can
lead some unbalanced people to topple into the abyss.’
*Will Self*
‘Brilliant, gripping and important. Fans of Gordon Burn have found
a new favourite writer.’
*Will Storr, author of The Heretics: adventures with the enemies
of science*
‘We all know how the story ends, but this balled fist of a book
reads like a thriller.’
*Dan Rhodes, author of When the Professor Got Stuck in the
Snow*
‘Masculinity, media and life on the margins of modern Britain are
all put under the microscope via the true and sorry story of outlaw
Raoul Moat … His very public disintegration is captured perfectly
by Andrew Hankinson.’
*Benjamin Myers, author of Beastings and Pig Iron*
‘Claustrophobic, tense and truly original, this gripping account of
Raoul Moat’s last days is impossible to put down. Andrew Hankinson
has done a superb job in marshalling the source material and
presenting it in such a way that the reader sees an unravelling
world through Moat’s eyes. The result is utterly unexpected,
leaving one torn between feelings of disgust, fear and pity. This
is a book that stays with you for a long time.’
*Dan Davies, author of In Plain Sight*
‘What sets this book apart is the fact that Hankinson’s narrative,
written in the second person, is formed entirely of Moat’s own
words. The result is a desperately sad book about masculinity,
deprivation and loss.’
*The Observer*
‘Andrew Hankinson’s You Could Do Something Amazing With Your Life
[You Are Raoul Moat] is an account of Moat’s last days that,
written in the second person and drawing on diary entries and
previously unheard tapes, reads like a novel.’
*New Statesman*
‘Writer and reader squat inside a mind that moves from irrational
anger and self-pity to despondency … Hankinson deftly assembles
[Moat’s] inner workings, lending credibility to his portrait while,
beyond the myopic commentary, we know, although we don’t see it,
that the outside world is closing in.’
*New Statesman*
‘An extraordinary study of violence, in all its bathos and
banality.’
*The Spectator*
‘[Hankinson’s] bold non-fiction debut puts you in the gunman’s
shoes by weaving an urgent second-person narrative from his
on-record thoughts … Intelligently done.’
*Metro*
‘A powerful portrayal of the banality of violence … a trigger
finger of a book: taut, tense and on edge.’
*Sunday Times*
‘Hankinson’s approach, a descendant of the literary non-fiction
favoured by fellow Northerners Gordon Burn, Blake Morrison and
David Peace, allows us to inspect Moat’s bitter logic up
close.’
*Financial Times*
‘Taut, uncomfortably thrilling … An unvarnished reconstruction of
Moat’s murderous rampage, which allows the facts – and the
perpetrator – to speak for themselves … Moat was a tormented man
with little mastery over his violent urges. His testimony lays bare
a retarded moral sense: right until the end he was largely
unrepentant of his actions, elated even, and indifferent or
oblivious to the pain he had caused. He was a destroyer, not a
hero.’
*Irish Times*
‘A claustrophobic true-crime account in the tradition of Truman
Capote’s In Cold Blood … [Hankinson’s] purpose is to show Moat as a
product of our culture and society … Moat is presented as an
intriguing case study in disintegration, making bad choices then
devoting all his intelligence to justifying them in his own
head.’
*The Guardian*
‘A remarkable book … [which] gives the reader the chilling,
dreadful impression of being inside Moat’s head. Nothing less than
compelling.’
*Irish Independent*
‘In less skilful hands, telling the story through Moat’s eyes could
have burnished the outlaw “legend” of Moat. Hankinson does not do
that, even though he shows us flashes of humanity … His book does
its bit in demystifying evil.’
*The Times*
‘Chilling … A very unsettling read.’
*The Herald*
‘Impressive … A powerful, intimate account of a ruined mind.’
*3:AM Magazine*
‘Powerfully and claustrophobically effective … [Hankinson]
generates just enough sympathy and pathos to make sense of the
situation, but no more.’
*LRB*
‘I strongly recommend this book. Brilliantly written.’
*John Niven, author of Kill Your Friends*
‘The second-person voice is a notoriously tricky one to maintain
and Hankinson uses it to great effect … Another strength is the
overwhelming sense that Moat is not in control of his own
narrative.’
*The Saturday Paper*
‘Hankinson has pulled off a singular journalistic feat, filtering
the sequence of events following Moat’s release from prison through
his own eyes. What Moat knows, we know. This is fact, with
gelignite at its core.’ BOOK OF THE WEEK
*Weekend Press*
‘[Hankinson] takes us inside the killer’s head without giving the
reader the privilege of distance from which to judge him.’
*The Guardian*
‘Being in Moat’s angry, paranoid head is an uncomfortable and
gut-churning place to be, yet Andrew Hankinson never lets Moat off
the hook, challenging his victim mentality and denials of
wrong-doing with bald statements of fact. This is a powerful and
disquieting book.’
*Crime Review*
‘One of the most original true crime books to emerge from Britain
in the last decade … A tradition in British crime writing is to
begin with the shootout and then whizz back to the perp’s childhood
to pore over clues that might explain his behavior. Instead,
Hankinson keeps us in the eye of the storm — creating what
Hollywood calls a ‘contained drama’ that confines the reader inside
the protagonist’s unhinged mind. The result is devastating: we see
how Moat justifies his actions and ignores those who try to help,
with no pesky analysis to interrupt the events … While the author
does deftly fact-check Moat’s unreliable narration with clever
parentheses, his immersive second-person approach was a brave
storytelling decision that has won the book awards in England … [a]
grim, high-definition, virtual-reality portrait.’
*Los Angeles Review of Books*
‘True crime from a radically different perspective.’
*Kirkus*
‘[A] gripper, a powerful literary experiment written in the voice
of the killer.’
*The Guardian*
‘A remarkable journey through the last days of a confused and
aggressive mind.’
*Robin Ince*
‘Readers see and experience only what Moat saw, which helps to
paint a terrifying picture of a man who was suffering from acute
mental health problems … The style of writing naturally makes you
empathise with the villain in a way that other books would not, but
Hankinson manages to tell the story with impressive
objectivity.’
*Foul Play Magazine*
‘Haunting and deeply unsettling.’
*Mystery Tribune*
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