A death foretold similarities between law and literature.

This paper will examine a number of critical issues concerning the death of Jean Charles de Menezes, fatally shot by armed anti terrorist police officers in London on 22nd July 2005. The author has eschewed the more traditional criminological methods of analysis and has adopted a more circumspect consideration using literature to question and disrupt official accounts of the event. The author draws on the writing of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and in particular the novel ‘Chronicle of a Death Foretold’ the story of the murder of Santiago Nasar told some 27 years after the event. The fictional murder of Santiago Nasar is used as a template to examine the circumstances surrounding the death of Jean Charles de Menezes. An analogy is drawn between the two sets of men waiting to kill both protagonists as they leave their homes. By deconstructing both the fictional and legal discourses the author is able to consider the changing nature of perceptions over time and the impact this has on the literature of law and the law of literature.