Spectator competition winners: sonnets with murder in mind

In Competition No. 3339 you were invited to submit a crime story in sonnet form.

Poems that have the suggestion of a criminal act at their heart – Robert Browning’s ‘My Last Duchess’, for example – were at the back of my mind when I set this challenge, and it attracted a terrific crop of entries. Hugh King’s Cluedo-inspired offering and Bill Greenwell’s Perry Mason-themed sonnet, which had echoes of Scooby-Doo (‘It was the janitor!), were unlucky to miss out on a prize, as were Bo Crowder, C. Paul Evans and Iain Morley. Those who did make the cut nab £20 and are printed below.

’Twas such a deed as no man ever did,

Though after me it would become the norm.

To kill a human like a calf or kid –

I was transgression in a brave new form.

I broke the law before it was the law.

(We had no Ten Commandments in my day.)

Each one of us must die, we knew; we saw

That day that any one of us can slay.