Modern book publishing is a branch of the packaging industry, as a visit to Waterstones will attest. It is necessary to open the pages to get a first sense of whether the text is the work of an author or a content creator. This one is definitely the work of an author.
Hallie
Rubenhold is a serious social historian who researches thoroughly and writes
measured prose, both evidenced in this book as in her previous one The Five.
Here she is re-telling the stories of the wife-murderer Dr Crippen, his two
wives, and his mistress who was acquitted of any complicity in the murder of the
second wife but who Rubenhold thinks was both more knowledgeable and more culpable
than she ever admitted. Part of her argument is that the mistress, Ethel de
Neave, was very much an agent though strategically depicted by her 1910 defence
counsel as a victim. To me, this has contemporary relevance in a world where
journalists continue to operate more or less automatically with the trope of the
female victim. It makes for a simpler, less challenging story, and a preferred
narrative of female weakness, “vulnerableyoungwoman” a journalistic cliché.
Rubenhold’s
detailed and quite leisurely narrative held my attention; towards the end she springs some
surprises in the form of evidence, recorded at the time, but
which was not brought to court. She leaves some questions open though in one
case I felt she left a small part of the story simply unfinished: stuff was burnt in
the gardens of Crippen’s house after the murder but what was being burnt is not
clarified.
Like her previous one, a very good book.
