Story of a Murder

**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 celebrated 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.

When Belle Elmore’s remains were discovered in the basement of 39 Hilldrop Crescent, North London in July 1910, the larger-than-life Vaudevillian performer was launched into stardom she never achieved on the stage.

Story of a Murder provides an intricately plotted, intimate look into the lives of three multifaceted women living during a time of electric progress and stifling limitation: Crippen’s first wife Charlotte, who died under mysterious circumstances, his mistress, Ethel, who claimed ignorance of his crime even as she escaped with Crippen disguised as his son, and Belle, the woman whose life Crippen took.

Throughout the twentieth century, the infamous ‘Crippen murder’ was told in such a way as to cast doubt on Crippen's guilt and to victim-blame his wife Cora, for her own murder. It also astonishingly depicted Crippen's younger mistress Ethel as innocent of any involvement in the killing of her love rival.

But new evidence unearthed by Rubenhold completely subverts this famous history, unravelling assumptions about the crime and deconstructing Edwardian beliefs about women, class aspiration, and the transatlantic world, ultimately proving that Charlotte, Belle, and Ethel were so much more than the passive victims history has portrayed them as.