My Brother the Killer (USED PAPERBACK)

By: Alix Sharkey

“Alix Sharkey’s riveting family chronicle, in which sibling mysteries hide in plain sight, is at once harrowing, heartbreaking, and horrifying. If Angela’s Ashes and My Dark Places had a secret love child, it might look very much like My Brother the Killer. I won’t soon forget it.”—Mark Sarvas, American Book Award–winning author of Memento Park

In the gritty Docklands twenty-five miles from London, Alix Sharkey and his siblings grew up in awe of their charismatic yet brutally violent alcoholic father. It was Alix’s fearless kid brother Stuart who defended his siblings at home, at school, and on the streets. Their fraternal bond was deep and powerful until Alix moved away. Stuart remained—and slid into a furtive life of sexual violence against teenage girls.

The brothers started out inseparable, but their life paths diverged radically. Alix became a journalist, cosmopolitan and bilingual, working for magazines in London, Paris, New York, and Los Angeles. Stuart landed in jail. In December 2002, he was found guilty of the kidnapping and murder of his fifteen-year-old niece, Danielle, the daughter of his wife’s brother. Despite his conviction, a lost appeal, and repeated pleas by Danielle’s parents, Stuart has steadfastly refused to reveal the location of his victim’s remains, condemning the girl’s parents to decades of unresolved grief.

In this remarkable memoir—a harrowing true story of family, violence, guilt, and atonement— Alix reflects on his own path to come to terms with his brother’s terrible crimes and to find justice for the young girl his brother killed.