Lynn: A Story of Prostitution, by Lynn Madden and June Levine (Attic, £7.99)

The majority of women live in an atmosphere of prostitution, writes June Levine in her new preface to the life story of Lynn …

The majority of women live in an atmosphere of prostitution, writes June Levine in her new preface to the life story of Lynn Madden, a Dublin prostitute whose evidence convicted her pimp for the murder of three women in the 1980s. Levine remembers feeling she had to kiss a boy who paid for the movies, and asks why women should be economically paralysed by their sex. And to those who claim prostitution provides therapy, she quotes the psychiatrist Ivor Browne, who treated Lynn Madden: "To whom is prostitution therapeutic? Certainly to none of the prostitutes I've met". This well-written, harrowing account by Lynn Madden of her life in a society which offered her no escape, and her pimp (a violent epileptic criminal) no therapy, provides an insight into the reality behind the headlines.