
The Peepshow
The Murders at Rillington Place
by Kate Summerscale
This title was previously available on NetGalley and is now archived.
Buy on Amazon
Buy on BN.com
Buy on Bookshop.org
*This page contains affiliate links, so we may earn a small commission when you make a purchase through links on our site at no additional cost to you.
Send NetGalley books directly to your Kindle or Kindle app
1
To read on a Kindle or Kindle app, please add kindle@netgalley.com as an approved email address to receive files in your Amazon account. Click here for step-by-step instructions.
2
Also find your Kindle email address within your Amazon account, and enter it here.
Pub Date May 06 2025 | Archive Date May 20 2025
PENGUIN GROUP The Penguin Press | Penguin Press
Talking about this book? Use #ThePeepshow #NetGalley. More hashtag tips!
Description
“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.
“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.
Available Editions
EDITION | Other Format |
ISBN | 9780593653630 |
PRICE | $30.00 (USD) |
PAGES | 320 |
Available on NetGalley
NetGalley Reader (PDF)
NetGalley Shelf App (PDF)
Download (PDF)
Readers who liked this book also liked:
Here Beside the Rising Tide
Jim Newton
Arts & Photography, Biographies & Memoirs, Nonfiction (Adult)
Jim Newton
Arts & Photography, Biographies & Memoirs, Nonfiction (Adult)
Godzilla’s Monsterpiece Theatre
Tom Scioli
Comics, Graphic Novels, Manga, Entertainment & Pop Culture, Sci Fi & Fantasy
Tom Scioli
Comics, Graphic Novels, Manga, Entertainment & Pop Culture, Sci Fi & Fantasy
Remember Us to Life
Joanna Rubin Dranger
Biographies & Memoirs, Comics, Graphic Novels, Manga, History
Joanna Rubin Dranger
Biographies & Memoirs, Comics, Graphic Novels, Manga, History