The investigator of the missing self.
I spent decades looking beneath the stories people told about crime, families and power. Eventually, I had to ask what was missing from my own.
My work now has three distinct expressions: investigative writing, public talks and psychotherapy. Each begins with a deceptively simple question: what has been hidden, and who needed it to stay that way?
Three kinds of investigation. One lifelong question.
The reporter and investigator
Years in journalism and private investigation taught me to read evidence, notice inconsistencies and ask the question everyone else had agreed to avoid.
The writer
I have written about adoption, crime, identity and the private cost of public stories. The people in my books are not case studies for my therapy practice; the books are investigations in their own right.
The therapist
In private practice, the inquiry belongs to the client. We look at protective roles, the vigilant watcher and the parts that learned to retreat. This is not an investigation of someone else’s guilt. It is a way of making room for a fuller self.
The questions became personal.
I was adopted and grew up with questions that were not always welcome. At thirteen, I wrote to Ian Brady. That letter began a long inquiry into the lives, claims and histories of people at the centre of notorious murder cases. Over the years I corresponded with and investigated Ian Brady and Kenneth Bianchi, and examined the case of Jeremy Bamber.
I am one of the very few people to have sat eye-to-eye with both Ian Brady, the convicted Moors murderer, and Kenneth Bianchi, one of the two men known as the Hillside Stranglers. Those encounters were part of decades of correspondence, research, interviews and investigative work—not commentary assembled from a comfortable distance.
I later worked as a journalist and private investigator. My own history did not replace the discipline of that work; it gave some of its questions an urgency I could not ignore. Why do we believe certain stories about childhood? What happens when the people who should be heard are not? And what does a person build inside themselves in order to survive?
I have discussed serial crime and investigative work in television and radio interviews, and have lectured at universities on the cases and on investigative journalism. I do not believe adoption made those men murderers. My book asks why I kept returning to their stories—and what I found when I turned the inquiry towards my own.
The private eye reads a person to catch them. The therapist reads a person to free them.
Dear Adoption, Meet Your Monsters
A memoir of adoption, serial murder and a forty-year investigation.
Letters, research, prison visits and an inquiry that became uncomfortably personal. This is the story of my encounters with the lives and cases of Ian Brady, Kenneth Bianchi and Jeremy Bamber—and of the child whose questions began it all.
The crimes belong to the people who committed them. The questions about adoption, secrecy and survival belong to a much larger conversation.
For publication details and the rest of Christine’s books, visit the Books page. No purchase link is shown here until a verified listing is available.
See books & investigations
Not commentary from a comfortable distance.
Dear Adoption, Meet Your Monsters draws on a forty-year investigation: letters, records, interviews, prison visits and direct encounters with people at the centre of internationally notorious murder cases. I sat eye-to-eye with Ian Brady, the convicted Moors murderer, and Kenneth Bianchi, one of the Hillside Stranglers. I also investigated the case of Jeremy Bamber, who maintains his innocence.
The book brings that work into conversation with my own history as an adopted child, investigative journalist, private investigator and, later, therapist. It asks what we learn to watch for, what institutions refuse to see, and what happens when an investigator finally turns the inquiry towards herself.
Speaking, interviews and lectures.
I am available to discuss my investigative work and writing with festivals, universities, podcasts, documentary producers and other event organisers. I bring the perspective of someone who has worked inside the story, not merely read the headline. I have given university lectures on notorious murder cases and investigative journalism, as well as numerous radio and television interviews on the subject. I am a Sunday Times bestselling author, with bylines in the Daily Mail and The Sunday Times, and appearances on GMTV on ITV and BBC World Service.
- Inside a forty-year investigation Letters, access, evidence and the ethical questions raised by studying notorious murder cases.
- Adoption, identity and the stories we are given An adopted writer investigates the gap between the official account and lived experience.
- The watcher self Why vigilance can become an identity, and what parts work suggests about the self it protects.
- From private eye to therapist What changes when the object of inquiry is not a suspect, but a person seeking their way back to themselves.
Talks can be tailored for a general audience, literary event or professional discussion. For a talk about a particular case, please describe the scope and audience in your enquiry.
Enquire about a talk or interviewExiled Self Therapy: The Art of Retrieval
My integrative therapy explores the roles we developed to cope: the vigilant watcher, the manager who keeps life running, and the younger parts that had to disappear. The aim is not to wage war on those protections, but to understand why they arrived and what may now be possible beyond them.
For clients who want it, I also make room for symbolic and spiritual exploration, including shamanic journeying. No particular spiritual belief is required to work with me. An investigative talk and a therapy session are different kinds of space; I keep that boundary clear.
I offer phone sessions and in-person work in the Richmond and Kew area. I am a Registered Member MBACP, listed on the BACP Register of Counsellors and Psychotherapists (registration number 418252), and I hold professional indemnity insurance.
There is usually another story beneath the one we were told.
Tell me which conversation you would like to begin.
Contact Christine