I read this after watching the episode of The Street where a baby killer is (to some extent) reconciled with the dead baby's mother. I wanted to find out what was known about the motivation of Mary Bell and what her life had been like since conviction. Also, I knew of Gitta Sereny, so did not expect sensationalist nonsense.
In a sober book that in no way makes any excuses for what happened, we find out about Mary Bell's life and how it paved the way for the murders to happen; about the way the system has treated her; about her own mixed up feelings for the whole thing; and about how she has faired.
It's difficult not to feel sympathy for her - without diminishing the seriousness of her crimes, she herself has suffered greatly as a result of the system not being geared up for the likes of her and the ridiculous way the British press whips up their readership about this kind of thing.
I have ambivalent feelings about the conclusions Sereny reaches. It's hard to imagine that if your own child was a victim you would feel any sympathy for the murderer at all, but I did come away feeling that what Bell did was not natural, so do believe that her surroundings let her down and society could be enlisted to help prevent crimes of this nature. ( )

An account of the poignant case of Mary Bell and the two toddlers she killed at the age of 11, in a poor area of industrial England in 1968. Her own life with an uncaring mother who worked as a prostitute and a drunken father is described. Since her release, Mary Bell has lived incognito.

This book goes some way towards helping us to understand the life and parenting experiences that may lead a child to sadistic and unfeeling acts, perhaps as a replay of trauma making another person take the role of victim.

There are other people, of course, who acted out the same pathology but with far larger consequences, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao to mention just three individuals. And Gita Sereny has also involved herself, as an Austrian who lived through the war years, with understanding how a whole country, and the individuals within it, were brought under the sway of the intelligent but profoundly damaged man that Hitler was.