October 1946. A lorry driver discovers a woman's body halfway up Wrotham Hill in Kent. What unfolds is a tale that Diana Souhami describes as "a fugue about killing" as she explores the real-life murder of a middle-aged spinster, Dagmar Petrzywalski. From victim to killer, detective to hangman, Souhami's tale of all those involved in the "industry of death" is meticulously researched – she includes both photographs and an index – and the investigation is plotted with a forensic accuracy and attention to detail reminiscent of an episode of CSI. Yet this is also a tale of postwar Britain, of food shortages and bomb-damaged buildings, and the focus on the backstory of characters such as the hangman Albert Pierrepoint and the detective "Fabian of the Yard" make it as much social history as crime story. Souhami pieces together these "shards of the past" to create a gripping exploration of a forgotten murder and an evocative portrait of 1940s Britain.
