Story of a Murder

**PRE-ORDER: The gripping, groundbreaking historical true crime from the award-winning

#1 Sunday Times bestselling author of THE FIVE**

__________

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.