Extract from How to Process a Murder by Laughton Rees

There is a certain and peculiar intimacy to a murder investigation. It’s a relationship of sorts—dysfunctional, very one-sided, somewhat obsessive.

The lead investigator will get to know everything about the victim and see them at their most unguarded and unflattering. They will have to cross the lines of usual human interaction, force open doors the victim chose to keep shut, rifle through drawers and documents never meant for public scrutiny, ask questions of the victim’s family and friends that in any other circumstance would be both egregiously intrusive and grossly impertinent. A murder investigator’s job is to shine the brightest of lights into the darkest corners of a person’s life. Ultimately, in order to discover who ended a life and why, an investigator must take that same life and also destroy it, by pulling it apart piece by piece.

In this respect the killer and the detective are closer to each other than either would care to acknowledge.