The Witchhunters

April 27, 2020
The pseudonymous Blake, a former Hong Kong police officer, and journalist Vittachi only partially succeed in solving the 1980 homicide of Insp. John MacLennan, a Scotsman living in Hong Kong who was found shot to death behind his locked bedroom door in his Kowloon apartment. The police at first believed MacLennan killed himself because he knew he was about to be arrested for sexually assaulting a boy and related crimes. The authors note the rush to judgment that avoided basic evidence collection—such as testing the dead man’s hands to see if there was any gunpowder residue—and disregarded anomalies, such as MacLennan having been shot five times. Blake and Vittachi also explore the man’s probable link to a pedophile ring, whose members included “top members of international Hong Kong society,” many of whom would have wanted the inspector, who had access to sensitive secrets, dead. A prefatory note concedes the conjectures in the text, including assumptions “about attitudes, emotions, actions and exchanges,” and the sourcing is less than robust. The flaws in this account leave room for a definitive look at this fascinating case.