Derrick Bird and the Cumbria Shootings

Yesterday's news of Derrick Bird's killing spree in Cumbria is so appalling that it is difficult to take in. There is, no doubt, much yet to be revealed about the man who murdered at least a dozen people in such peaceful places as Whitehaven and Seascale, who shot many others, and who finally ended his own life – in the paradoxically lovely Lake District village of Boot. But this terrible tragedy is another reminder of the chasm between fictional crime, which entertains so many of us, and...