David James Smith

Let Us Prey David James Smith

Ben Field was good looking and charming, and as a passionate English literature student, knew the power of words to seduce. In the village of Maids Moreton in Buckinghamshire, 69-year-old Peter Farquhar, an eminent teacher and author, found Ben's presence irresistible. They set up home together, underwent a 'betrothal' ceremony at a church, but all along Ben was gaslighting his partner and secretly poisoning him. A year later Peter was dead.

Ben moved on to a neighbour in the same street, Ann Moore-Martin, who also fell helplessly in love with him. All the time Ben was setting her up to redraft her will so that Ben would benefit on her death.

Remarkably, Ben described in intimate detail his manipulations and scheming, his perverse fantasies and desires in numerous journals and diaries, providing a unique insight into the mind of a psychopathic personality.

This is an extraordinary story of corruption and evil within a seemingly cosy English middle-class setting. Combining the forensic attention to detail of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood with the rural whimsy of an Agatha Christie novel, Let Us Prey is an astonishing account of one of the most bewildering and fascinating murders of modern times.