You Could Do Something Amazing With Your Life (You are Raoul Moat)

An award-winning true-crime story about a fugitive on the run, told from his point of view. Winner of the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award for Nonfiction.

Callous murderer, outlaw hero or victim of the system? The subject of Andrew Hankinson's book defies all such labels.

After killing his ex-girlfriend's new lover, shooting her in the stomach, and blinding a policeman, Raoul Moat disappeared into the woods of Northern England, evading discovery for seven days. Moat captured the public imagination; he soon had an online following. Eventually, cornered by the police, Moat shot himself.

Drawing on extensive research - including many hours of tapes Moat recorded whilst he was at large - Hankinson tells Moat's story using Moat's own words, and those of the welfare agencies which engaged with him. The result is an unprecedented examination of violent breakdown; an electrifying nonfiction narrative in the tradition of Hunter S. Thompson and Norman Mailer.



'Immersing the reader in Moat's self-justifications, You Could Do Something Amazing With Your Life You Are Raoul Moat is both an experiment in empathy and an exploration of the limits of empathy - holding the reader hostage in the echo chamber of an angry and confused man's head.'
-Louis Theroux

'Brilliantly written ... Smart literary nonfiction.'
-Jon Ronson, author of The Psychopath Test

'The media love the idea that a killer's mind is somehow "impenetrable", because it gives them carte blanche to fill it up with their sensationalised bullshit ... This book does the commendable job of demystifying evil yet again, and showing us the rainy-Tuesday-afternoon-dullness and grinding frustration that can lead some unbalanced people to topple into the abyss.'
-Will Self