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Story of a Murder

Story of a Murder

The Wives, the Mistress and Dr Crippen

Summary

**PRE-ORDER: The gripping, groundbreaking historical true crime from the award-winning
#1 Sunday Times bestselling author of THE FIVE**
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In Story of a Murder, bestselling author of The Five and prizewinning historian Hallie Rubenhold reexamines the events leading up to the infamous Crippen Murder from the perspectives of the three women at the centre of it all.

This is the story of a murder, not a murderer…

On 1 February, 1910, the vivacious, diamond-adorned music hall performer, Belle Elmore, suddenly vanished from her home, causing alarm among her friends, the entertainers of the Music Hall Ladies’ Guild. Their demands for an investigation would lead to the unearthing of a gruesome secret and trigger a fevered international manhunt for Belle’s husband, the medical fraudster, Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen.

Ethel le Neve, Crippen’s typist and lover, who fled with Crippen in disguise, has always hidden in the shadows of this tale – was she really just ‘an innocent young girl’ in thrall to a powerful older man? And was there an equally sinister story behind the death of Crippen’s first wife, Charlotte?

In this epic examination of one of the most infamous murders of the twentieth century, Rubenhold gives voice to those who were never properly heard – the women.

Brimming with twists and featuring a carnival cast of eccentric entertainers, starry lawyers, zealous detectives, medics and liars, STORY OF A MURDER offers an electrifying snapshot of Britain and America at the dawn of the modern era.

About the author

Hallie Rubenhold

Hallie Rubenhold is the No.1 Sunday Times bestselling and Baillie Gifford prize-winning author of The Five, the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper. A renowned social historian whose expertise lies in revealing stories of previously unknown women and episodes in history, she is the author of The Covent Garden Ladies which was the inspiration behind BBC TV's 'Harlots'. Her biographical work, Lady Worsley's Whim, was dramatized by the BBC as 'The Scandalous Lady W'. Her most recent work of non-fiction, Story of a Murder, the wives, the mistress and Dr Crippen, will be published in March 2025. She has also written two acclaimed novels Mistress of My Fate and The French Lesson which give voice to the women written out by eighteenth-century literature. She lives in London with her husband. Meet her @HallieRubenhold
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