As relentlessly compelling as the most page-turning fiction, this true story of murder, sensation and miscarriages of justice in 1950s Britain is another tour de force of historical recreation from the author of The Suspicions of Mr Whicher.
London, 1953. Police discover the bodies of three young women hidden in a wall at 10 Rillington Place, a dingy terrace house in Notting Hill. On searching the building, they find another body beneath the floorboards, then an array of human bones in the garden. But they have already investigated a double murder at 10 Rillington Place, three years ago, and the killer was hanged. Did they get the wrong man?
A nationwide manhunt is launched for the tenant of the ground-floor flat, a softly spoken former policeman named Reg Christie. Star reporter Harry Procter chases after the scoop. Celebrated crime writer Fryn Tennyson Jesse begs to be assigned to the case. The story becomes an instant sensation, and with the relentless rise of the tabloid press the public watches on like never before. Who is Christie? Why did he choose to kill women, and to keep their bodies near him? As Harry and Fryn start to learn the full horror of what went on at Rillington Place, they realise that Christie might also have engineered a terrible miscarriage of justice in plain sight.
In this riveting true story, Kate Summerscale mines the archives to uncover the lives of Christie’s victims, the tabloid frenzy that their deaths inspired, and the truth about what happened inside the house.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
ISBN: 9781526684721
Number of pages: 288
Dimensions: 234 x 153 mm
Though centred around the crimes of the infamous serial killer Reg Christie, the book is actually a panorama of British society in wartime and through postwar austerity.
We follow an incredibly varied cast of real...
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More intense than her previous work but just as meticulously researched, this book is a readable and honest account of the ‘Rillington Place Murders’ from the well recognised Kate Summerscale.
Her attention to detail...
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A very clear and thoroughly researched book about the London serial killer from the 1950's, Reg Christie. It's set against the backdrop of the Queen's coronation, violent racism against Black people in... More
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