Jeff Glor talks with Sophie Hannah for her latest book, “The Cradle in the Grave,” a psychological thriller about a TV producer unwittingly caught up in a murder scandal. Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book? Sophie Hannah: Unusually for me, I was inspired by news events: three mothers accused of murdering their own children. Normally the origins of my novels are much more personal than that, but I would never have written “The Cradle in the Grave” if I hadn’t been fascinated by the real-life cases of three British women – Sally Clark, Angela Cannings and Trupti Patel – who were tried for the murders of their own babies. Clark lost two infant sons to SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome), or crib-death. Cannings and Patel each lost three babies, and doctors couldn’t find any explanation for the deaths. All three women were accused of murder. Testifying against them was eminent child protection expert Professor Sir Roy Meadow, who coined what came to be known as Meadow’s Law: ‘One crib death within a family is a tragedy, two is suspicious, three is murder’. Meadow also testified at Sally Clark’s trial that the odds of more than one baby in the same nuclear family dying unexpectedly of natural causes were 73 million to 1. On the basis of his testimony along these lines, both Sally Clark and Angela Cannings were found guilty of murder. By the time Trupti Patel came to stand trial, however, the public mood had changed. Many respected statisticians had come forward to say that Meadow’s 73 million to 1 statistic was utter nonsense. Campaigners for the exoneration and release of Clark and Cannings pointed out that if a particular family had an undiagnosed genetic condition, the likelihood of more than one baby from that family falling victim to SIDS might actually be very high. When Trupti Patel stood trial for the murders of her three babies, there were pro-Clark-and-Cannings, anti-Meadow protesters demonstrating outside the court. One medical expert witness who testified for the prosecution told me, ‘I knew as soon as I arrived at court and saw the crowd of protesters with their placards and banners, as soon as I was told that I had to be taken in round the back entrance in an armored van – I knew then that, whatever happened inside that courtroom, Trupti Patel would be acquitted. There was a lot of well-publicized anger about so-called evil doctors persecuting innocent crib-death mothers; politically, it would have been impossible to send yet another mother to prison for the murders of her three babies.’ I found this compelling, and chilling. There was no more or less conclusive evidence of either guilt or innocence in the Patel case than in Clark or Cannings. If Angela Cannings had been the third of the three women to stand trial rather than the second, she would almost definitely have been acquitted. If Sally Clark had been third instead of first, she would have secured not-guilty verdicts too. Trupti Patel was fortunate to have been tried at a time when public opinion was heavily weighted in favour of ‘the crib-death mothers’ rather than ‘the child protection hawk doctors’. This was another aspect of the whole affair that I became obsessed with: the way everybody I spoke to about this issue seemed to view it in ‘team’ terms – the mothers versus the doctors. In the course of my research for “The Cradle in the Grave,” I asked many people – almost everyone I met – for their views on these newsworthy cases. Some people were on the doctors’ side, and others supported the mothers; it was either ‘Those doctors are evil – they demonize innocent women’ or ‘Those women murdered their babies – it’s just that no one can prove it’. Not one single person said, ‘Since Sally Clark, Angela Cannings and Trupti Patel are completely distinct individuals, I think it’s possible that Roy Meadow was right about one or two of them and wrong about one or two of them. Some of them might be guilty and some innocent’. Everyone in the country seemed to have decided what story they wanted to tell themselves, and was cherry-picking the facts that would make that story work, while disregarding anything that didn’t quite fit. So – very long-winded answer! – I wanted to write a novel about several woman accused of murdering their babies, and to tell the stories of those women as individuals. How do three completely different women who have never met, and who have nothing but motherhood in common, end up in horrific predicaments that are sinisterly similar? And are they really similar, or do they only appear to be? That’s where the mystery element comes in! JG: What else are you reading right now? SH: I am reading “Shit My Dad Says” by Justin Halpern, a brilliant, baffling, painful book that details a childhood full of what can only be described as psychological abuse in a way that makes the reader suspect the author has no idea quite how dysfunctionly damaging his hilariously sarcastic father is. The book is both laugh-out-loud funny and slightly chilling; its every page demonstrates the difficulty of recognizing abuse when it arrives in the form of extremely witty one-liners from an allegedly loving parent. JG: What’s next for you?
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