In our weekly look at books, we focus on a true story of murder, sensation and miscarriages of justice…
The Peepshow by Kate Summerscale has been longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction 2025.
Set in London, 1953, police discover the bodies of three young women hidden in a wall at number ten Rillington Place, a dingy terrace house in Notting Hill.
On searching the building, they find another body beneath the floorboards, then an array of human bones in the garden.
But they have already investigated a double murder at ten Rillington Place, three years ago, and the killer was hanged. Did they get the wrong man?
A nationwide manhunt is launched for the tenant of the ground-floor flat, a softly spoken former policeman named Reg Christie.
Star reporter Harry Procter chases after the scoop.
Celebrated crime writer Fryn Tennyson Jesse begs to be assigned to the case.
The story becomes an instant sensation, and with the relentless rise of the tabloid press, the public watches on like never before.
Who is Christie? Why did he choose to kill women and to keep their bodies near him?
As Harry and Fryn start to learn the full horror of what went on at Rillington Place, they realise that Christie might also have engineered a terrible miscarriage of justice in plain sight.
In this riveting true story, Summerscale mines the archives to uncover the lives of Christie’s victims, the tabloid frenzy that their deaths inspired, and the truth about what happened inside the house.
Top ten chart with Waterstones of Norfolk Street, in Lynn:
1. The Safekeep – Yael Van Der Wouden
2. Sleepwalkers – Scarlett Thomas
3. Rewitched – Lucy Jane Wood
4. Murder at the Monastery – Richard Coles
5. Jess and Norma – Jessica Asquith & Norma Burton
6. Midnight and Blue – Ian Rankin
7. Caught Up – Navessa Allen
8. There Are Rivers In The Sky – Elif Shafak
9. The Wedding People – Alison Espach
10. By Any Other Name – Jodi Picoult
