Peter Charleton spent seven years researching a catalogue of Irish criminal cases involving murder and assault, as well as looking at genocide in Africa and 20th century Europe. His book, Lies in a Mirror: An Essay on Evil and Deceit, examines the selfawareness of murderers, rapists and other criminals and the author is led to conclude that people who have committed the worst crimes rarely see themselves as being in the wrong. "They cannot admit to evil. If they do, that admission is liable to destroy them, " says the author.

Charleton was inspired to write this extended essay on the nature of human evil following an obscure case that he dealt with as a barrister some years ago. A respected educator was caught abusing children and, immediately after his trial and sentence, died of heart failure. Underneath his life as a pillar of the community he was a paedophile. The man had lived out a myth about himself. And when his denial was shattered, his heart failed. The author poses the question:

"do criminals live out a myth?"

Charleton's brief is broad.

He takes a look not just at cases involving single or multiple murders by indivudual criminals but also the mass genocides in Rwanda, the pogrom against the Armenians and the emergence of national socialism in Nazi Germany. Charleton graduated in law from Trinity College Dublin in 1980. He has written widely on Irish criminal law and has also lectured at TCD.

Charleton argues that the criminal who sees himself as a victim may kill a few people, but the ideological drive of God-like superiority of a movement like the HutuPower clique in Rwanda can kill a million over six weeks.

What drives people to murder on such a scale is one of the book's recurring themes.

In part, the answer is a shattered mind, Charleton concludes. "It is not so much that people regard their victim as sub-human, " Charleton said, "but that the perpetrator sees his own group as superior."

The author also writes about his experiences with the murder cases that have often arisen from robberies in the isolated homes of elderly people in rural Ireland. He asks why has it repeatedly happened that weaponless victims are beaten to death even though the confession statements of those who witnessed these horrors record that the victims cried out for mercy? What is it that permits criminals to function in a state of mind devoid of compassion and mercy?

The author bases his thoughts on a criminal practice as an advocate spanning 25 years. Forms of disguise are used to protect the privacy of those involved in the Irish criminal cases.