James “cried like hell” and, after a while, wrote back saying sorry, asking if there was anything he could do. Her response was brief: “I regretted that email as soon as I pressed send.”
Another of Hallam’s friends wrote to say that the agent would have been proud of what his killer had achieved.
“Imagine how that made me feel,” says James and for a moment it looks like he might cry.
He went to the British Library to dig out that old newspaper clipping for the book and while he was there, he pulled out another fragment from the archive: the local news story about the car crash that killed his mother when he was seven.
Back then, James was called Erwin James Monahan. From his mother’s death until the day he took his two first names as a writer’s pseudonym, life would be tough.
His father was a violent drunk. There was never enough to eat. A few weeks after James’ 11th birthday, he was placed on probation for breaking into a television factory. After he robbed a bowling alley he was placed in state care.
The children’s home where he lived for four years would be his only fixed address until he went to prison for murder. In between, he squatted, slept rough and stayed with girlfriends.
He had two daughters with different mothers, but both women threw him out for his drunken violence. James offers no excuses.
“Lots of people have difficulties in their lives and they get through it,” he says.
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