Cathcart, a journalist, is perhaps guilty of exaggerating the public response to the TV presenter's murder, but otherwise this is an admirably factual account, starting with Dando's "small-fry roots", as she called them, and the ambition which took her into local papers, radio and then television.

Cathcart attended the entire trial of Barry George, where everything hung on three issues - identification, alibi and the forensic evidence. As he describes the moment when the jury returned the most controversial verdict of recent years, the reader cannot help but share his doubts at the perverse nature of their decision.

(Penguin, £7.99)