The Peepshow

The Murders at Rillington Place

De: Kate Summerscale

Narrado por: Nicola Walker

“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.

©2025 Kate Summerscale (P)2025 Penguin Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

"Riveting... Simultaneously revels in and criticizes the press’s shameless bravado in shaping the Christie murder investigation ... The author questions our own ambivalent complicity in the 'peepshow' of true-crime reportage ... Ms. Summerscale’s evocation of Christie’s purse-lipped, self-satisfaction and his bossy, neurotic pride relates British repression to obsession, prudishness to prurience."—Sara Lodge, Wall Street Journal

“Summerscale, the multiple-award-winning author of five previous books, brings a novelist’s eye and a sociologist’s understanding to a trove of thrilling material . . . peppered with eccentric figures and interesting asides . . . Summerscale gives equal time to Christie’s unfortunate victims, treating them as real people rather than pawns in someone else’s story. And she 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.”—Sarah Lyall, New York Times Book Review

“Very good . . . persuasive social analysis, both historical and contemporary . . . Absorbing, authoritative and well researched.”—Chris Hewitt, Minnesota Star Tribune

A thoroughly researched time

Seeing the events through the eyes of Harry Proctor (reporter) and Fryn Jesse (novelist) was a creative way to tell this story. I was shocked at the racism, misogyny, miscarriages of justice and the murders by Christie' hand.
A compelling book and horrific story.
Also, I enjoyed the narrator!

The details

The details in this book had details. Individuals were often identified by such details as eye color, height, clothing. The research must have been exhaustive.