Beyond Belief: A Chronicle of Murder and Its Detection

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Beyond Belief: A Chronicle of Murder and its Detection (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1967) (1968 paperback:

Literary genre and style

First published in 1967, a year after the Moors murderers were sentenced to life imprisonment, the book is a mixture of reportage, speculation, literary

The book's chapters begin with epigraphs from other sources that are not always relevant to the murders, chosen by Williams in an attempt to evoke the mood in working-class Britain at that time. An example: for one chapter dealing with the murder spree itself, Williams quotes the Dave Clark Five song "Catch Us If You Can"—as if these words described the murderers' attitude at the time.

Criticism

As a work of literature, critics have not held Beyond Belief in the same high esteem as other crime-related nonfiction novels like In Cold Blood or Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song (1980). Indeed, the book seems to have fallen out of favor because many of Emlyn Williams' suggestions and theories about the Moors murders have since been disproven in subsequent years.

Williams' florid prose style, questionable characterizations, and frequent discretionary editorializations on the events (both proven and alleged) have come to be regarded as overly speculative and sensationalistic, as well as rather quaintly stereotypical and dated. That the author had minimal contact with most of the individuals involved in the case—and had therefore seen fit to invent fictitious scenes and dialogue, and embellish certain details to account for what was not publicly known at the time—has also been a source of criticism. However he did spend valuable research time with David Smith and his wife (Hindley's sister)—this is referred to in the recent book Evil Relations by Carol Ann Lee.

Public reception and influence

Beyond Belief was a bestseller in Britain in the years following its publication and was a main selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club in the United States. It has been reported that Myra Hindley strongly objected to Emlyn Williams' account of her relationship with Ian Brady, and that during the early years of her sentence, she implored friends and family not to read the book.

The book is mentioned by the character Amyl Nitrate (played by