CJ Dunford
C J Dunford has a thing for a murder. Although she’s never actually committed one, but she’s contemplated it. She has a list. (Yes, you know who you are.)
She’s written lots of books and in every one someone gets killed, so it was inevitable that one day she would come to write about Scotland’s most ‘successful’ serial killer.
Originally, she was asked to write a play about Burke, but to come up with a different angle than just the many murders. This led to her investigating the story of his jailer, Captain Rose. It turned out that no one had recorded what Rose thought about his celebrity prisoner, so she made it up.
As a play it toured Scotland a few times, with West Port Productions, before coming back to rest in its native Edinburgh. At this point CJ met a man in the pub, called Al, who suggested it would make a good book, so she wrote it. It’s almost entirely different from the play, but still full of death, murder and the quest for understanding what can turn an ordinary man into a killer.
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