SOURCE: Barber, Lynn. “Lynn Barber of the Independent on Sunday Defends the Indefensible.” London Review of Books 13, no. 6 (21 March 1991): 5.

In the following review, Barber faults The Journalist and the Murderer, alleging the book fails to carry the weight of its opening lines and that Malcolm's intent in writing the book is aimed at deflecting blame in her own legal battles.

I shall bite the next person who comes up to me at a party and asks if I've read The Journalist and the Murderer. It is not a well-intentioned question. It implies that Ms Malcolm's book has dealt irreparable damage to me and my kind (journalists who do interviews for a living), and that henceforward we must hang our heads in shame. I don't see it myself, but let's begin with the book.

It is an account of the ethical issues supposedly arising from the MacDonald-McGinniss case in...