LITTLE LOST ANGEL

It's always unnerving to read about young teenagers killing (in this case) a 12-year-old, but what's striking about this story is how little time it took for the relationships to escalate into violence. Shanda Sharer started at a new school in the fall of 1991, and she was murdered on January 11, 1992. Another feature of interest is the synergism between two personalities involved in the murder: one who had the passion to hate the victim, and the other who had the absence of feeling to be able to kill without remorse. Michael Quinlan has an engaging, suspenseful style and brings out some important issues surrounding increased violence among teenagers. The book is somewhat marred, though, by his limited knowledge of psychiatry, and by his occasional irrelevant remarks about normal teen fascinations (rock music, occult literature).

For another viewpoint on this same crime, see Cruel Sacrifice by Aphrodite Jones.