Penguin Press
The Peepshow: The Murders at Rillington Place
Couldn't load pickup availability
"A trove of thrilling material . . . skillfully examines the racism, sexism, economic privation and class prejudices that permeated postwar England . . . There's so much to admire in this engaging, deeply researched book." --The New York Times Book Review
"An absorbing portrait of post-WWII London." --Booklist
*A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice * Named a Best Book of 2024 by FT * Nominated for the Women's prize for nonfiction*
From the Edgar Award-winning author of The Haunting of Alma Fielding, the tale of two journalists competing to solve the notorious Christie murders in postwar London
In March 1953, London police discovered the bodies of three young women hidden in a wall at 10 Rillington Place, a dingy rowhouse in Notting Hill. On searching the building, they found another body beneath the floorboards, then an array of human bones in the garden. They launched a nationwide manhunt for the tenant of the ground-floor apartment, a softly spoken former policeman named Reg Christie. But they had already investigated a double murder at 10 Rillington Place three years before, and the killer was hanged. Did they get the wrong man?
The story was an instant sensation. The star reporter Harry Procter chased after the scoop on Christie. The eminent crime writer Fryn Tennyson Jesse begged her editor to let her cover the case. To Harry and Fryn, Christie seemed a new kind of murderer: he was vacant, impersonal, a creature of a brutish postwar world. Christie liked to watch women, they discovered, and he liked to kill them. They realized that he might also have engineered a terrible miscarriage of justice.
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. What she finds sheds fascinating light on the origins of our fixation with true crime--and suggests a new solution to one of the most notorious cases of the century.
Share
Book Details
ISBN:
9780593653630
EAN:
0593653637
Binding:
Hardcover
Pages:
320
Authors:
Kate Summerscale
Publisher:
Penguin Press
Published Date: 2025-06-05
View full details
superb book fantastic reading could not put the book down was totally immersed BRILLIANT FIVE STAR READ.
This is not a definitive account of the Rillington Place murders; that aspect has been covered by previous authors. Instead this book describes the victims of Christie and those who had narrow escapes with a level of sympathetic detail not found in the earlier works on the case. The coverage of the case by Harry Procter, star reporter of the Sunday Pictorial, showed that the amorality of gutter journalism is not a new phenomenon. The more restrained writings of Fryn Tennyson Jesse, also covered here, provide a counterbalance.Above all, the book paints a drab, grey picture of post-war life in the slums of North Kensington. As such it is a valuable, well-written addition to the earlier books by Eddowes (senior), Kennedy and Oates. Recommended.
I'm afraid this book is all over the place and feels padded out. It's part social history of the 'how horrible the people of the past were' kind, often only loosely to do with the case if at all, and has a clear left-wing feminist slant.She even quotes the Socialist Worker, blaming capitalism for the murders, and of course there are no 'prostitutes', only 'street workers' and 'street walkers'. The people who were drawn to Rillington Place after the murders were ghouls - except a group of womern who tried to break in who are exempt from criticism because they just wanted to enter the killer's lair and see the scene of domestic horror.It's also part biography of two people: a sensationalist journalist who covered the story, and a random writer whose only link with the case is that she managed to blag a seat in court and only seems to have been included because she was a female. Nevertheless, you will end up knowing as much about her life as Christie's, if not more.It's a bizarre mix, but the Christie parts of the story are inevitably interesting because it's a fascinating case.
Summerscale efficiently tells a much told story which exposes the sordid underside of Britain at the dawn of the Elizabethan era. But the narrative is padded out - no doubt in recognition of its much ploughed nature - by sub narratives about the journalists covering and exploiting the case and trial voyeur Fryn Tennyson. The upshot seems to be that Evans was the provocateur of his wife and child’s murders at the hands of Christie. The peepshow theme is rather plodding, unfortunately.
I ordered this book from AMAZON and it never arrived but Amazon took the money-not impressed.Items OrderedPriceThe Peepshow: The thrilling new page-turner from Britain’s top-selling true crime writer[Kindle Edition]By: Kate SummerscaleSold by: Amazon Australia Services, Inc.Qty: 1$16.29Item(s) Subtotal: $14.81----Total Before Tax: $14.81Tax Collected: $1.48----Total for this order: $16.29
