'I heard the mob call my name'

If you must do crime . . .

'Whispering City' by Sara Moliner, translated by Mara Faye Lethem (Abacus) R280

A soaraway success in Spain, this atmospheric mystery offers a fascinating dissection of the "tyranny of silence" under General Franco. It is Barcelona, 1952, and a wealthy socialite has been murdered in what appears to be a botched burglary. A young journalist, Ana Martí Noguer, has been assigned to report on the case but soon discovers that events leading to the victim's killing differ dramatically from the official version - and that senior members of the fascist regime are implicated in the murder.

The issue

Remember Justine Sacco? She was the American PR who flew to visit relatives in Cape Town in December 2013 and, before boarding at Heathrow, tweeted to her 170 followers, "Going to Africa. Hope I don't get Aids. Just kidding. I'm white!" She'd thought it a witty comment on white privilege, but the twittersphere disagreed; by the time she'd landed, 11 hours later, she was topping the "trending" list worldwide and millions of people had labelled her a racist.

As journalist Jon Ronson put it in The New York Times last month: "The furore over Sacco's tweet had become not just an ideological crusade against her perceived bigotry but also a form of idle entertainment. Her complete ignorance of her predicament for those 11 hours lent the episode both dramatic irony and a pleasing narrative arc. As Sacco's flight traversed the length of Africa, a hashtag began to trend worldwide: #HasJustineLandedYet. "Seriously. I just want to go home to go to bed, but everyone at the bar is SO into #HasJustineLandedYet. Can't look away. Can't leave" and "Right, is there no one in Cape Town going to the airport to tweet her arrival? Come on, Twitter! I'd like pictures #HasJustineLandedYet."

The stocks and pillories of the 18th century were back, thanks to social media. In his new book, So You've Been Publicly Shamed (Picador), Ronson writes: "When we deployed shame, we were utilising an immensely powerful tool. It was coercive, borderless and increasing in speed and influence. Hierarchies were being levelled out. The silenced were getting a voice. It was like the democratisation of justice."

Or so Ronson, once an enthusiastic shamer himself, initially thought. For the truth was closer to the baying of mob rule. His investigation into shaming eventually led Ronson to decide not to join in any more public condemnations unless they were of behaviour that physically hurt someone. It was, he writes, like becoming a vegetarian. "I missed the steak . but I could no longer ignore the slaughterhouse."

The bottom line

"In short evolutionary time we have changed from group-living primates skilled at reading each other's every gesture and intention to a solitary species, each one of us preoccupied with our own screen." - The Village Effect: Why Face-to-Face Contact Matters by Susan Pinker (Atlantic)