Story of a Murder: The Wives, the Mistress, and Dr. Crippen, by Hallie Rubenhold, Dutton, 512 pages, March 25, 2025. $32.

In Story of a Murder, her latest book on sensational British crimes, Hallie Rubenhold explores the 1910 case of the murderous Dr. Hawley Crippen, who absconded with his “lady typist” after burying the remains of his inconvenient wife in the cellar. As with Rubenhold’s earlier work, The Five, a ground-breaking exploration of the lives of Jack the Ripper’s victims, Story of a Murder focuses on the women in Crippen’s life, telling their stories with depth, insight and empathy. A welcome departure from the run-of-the-mill “true” crime books and a breath of fresh air for a stale, tawdry genre. Well-written and suspenseful. An excellent prospect for film or TV.

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There is something in the British national character that loves a good murder story told and retold with increasing dollops of fiction, stated with unwavering confidence until the killing becomes an epic tragedy carved ever deeper into the cultural consciousness.

But as Rubenhold says: “The process of rarefying a crime into a legend removes all nuance” and it is her gift to upend such stories that everyone thinks they know by telling them in a way that is utterly new. The Five (2020) tosses the customary narrative about the Whitechapel murders into the bin, using the victims to explore the social history of the era. The biographies take the women up to almost the moment when they have their encounter with the killer and no further. There is no blood, no gore and no speculation as to who the Ripper might be.
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