Friday, February 12, 1993. Two outwardly unremarkable ten-year-old boys, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, began their day playing truant and ended it running an errand for a local video shop. In between they abducted and killed the toddler James Bulger. The Sleep of Reason is the harrowing, sensitive, definitive account of this terrible crime and its consequences. In a new Preface (which considers the re-arrest of Jon Venables in February 2010) David James Smith writes: It is as true now as it was then that the murder has never really been explained and the motive for the crime remains a mystery. This book, the result of considerable research and a painstaking, sometimes distressing assembly of the facts, was my attempt to offer some insight and understanding. Surprisingly evocative, even moving ...immensely valuable. (Times). Dramatic and disturbing. (Anita Brookner, Observer). Compelling and compassionate. (Times Educational Supplement).