The Peepshow

A remarkable new look at the Rillington Place murders . . . In a manner reminiscent of Hallie Rubenhold in The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper, Summerscale restores the dignity of Christie’s victims . . . In portraying the public hunger for sensationalism, or chronicling the race riots in Notting Hill in 1958, the author draws no explicit parallels with the present day. She trusts that her readers will make their own conclusions, and her work is the more powerful for it. I hope she will forgive me if I say that – in the best sense – this is an awful book: but its shocking truths are necessary ones -- Erica Wagner * Financial Times * Summons up a murky London underworld . . . The Peepshow examines the macabre saga with tremendous skill and verve * The Times * An inspired storyteller . . . Summerscale’s greatest achievement is to empathize with the victims of Christie’s violence. In the ‘true crime’ genre there is a tendency to focus on the monstrous criminal, leaving his victims to fade into the background. The author resists this temptation, revealing the complex characters of the women who were murdered . . . A meticulously researched and lively tale of crime, journalism and gender roles in postwar Britain -- Joanna Bourke * TLS * The Peepshow: The Murders at 10 Rillington Place is Kate Summerscale’s most affecting historical true crime since The Suspicions of Mr Whicher . . . She pieces together Christie in the way you might try to repair a smashed mirror: no matter how well the pieces seem to fit, the overall impression is that of disturbingly multifarious personality who seemed, while on trial, “a bemused spectator of his own atrocities” . . . All told, it’s a masterful piece of work -- Declan Burke * Irish Times * Every bit the gripping, page-turning treat that true crime fanatics salivate for. What sets it apart is the author’s decision to use this classic murder story to expose the rotten underside of post-war Britain in the early 1950s. She paints a backdrop of grime and squalor, of flickering gas lamps, toxic smogs and bombed-out dereliction, bringing to the fore a society that routinely demeaned women and eroticised violence against them, particularly through a flourishing tabloid press -- Mark Bostridge * Spectator * Takes a novel approach to the retelling of the Christie murders . . . [Summerscale] skewers an era, the squalid, rackety, hand-to-mouth life of 1950s London, its pawn shops and doss houses and late-night cafes . . . The Peepshow invites us to look closer -- Anthony Quinn * Observer * As one would expect from the author of The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, this is a riveting read, grisly and chilling though much of the detail is. By making the figures of Harry Procter and Fryn Tennyson Jesse so prominent, Summerscale finds a new way of telling the story, and she draws on an impressive amount of research to re-create a postwar world of bombsites, squalid living conditions, prostitution, backstreet abortions and eye-wateringly blatant racism, while not neglecting the wider, happier world represented by the coronation -- Nigel Andrew * Literary Review * Now, we can re-examine [the murders] through the probing eyes and incisive mind of Kate Summerscale, who has a penchant for the macabre in British domestic life and a gift for conjuring the feel and smell of a time and a place … Gripping … Summerscale has worked hard to find out as much as she can about the lives of each of Christie’s victims -- Ysenda Maxtone Graham * London Review of Books * Engrossing * Crime Monthly * Littered with delicious details of time and place . . . I don’t do true crime, but this is one of the best books I’ve read all year -- Declan Burke * RTÉ 1 Arena * The most gripping true crime story I have ever read ... You feel, as she describes Notting Hill in 1953, and all that is going on there, that this is alien soil. Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot would have been out of their depth, though maybe Dostoyevsky would have felt at home -- A. N. Wilson * The Tablet * This gripping true-crime investigation breathes life into the women whose lives were ended there and suggests a thought-provoking new theory -- Deirdre O'Brien * Best Magazine * The Peepshow is a compelling re-examination of this macabre saga * The Week * Once more, Kate Summerscale shatters our preconceptions of a classic crime -- Val McDermid Summerscale captures all the horrible fascination of Christie’s crimes, but also expertly situates them in their troubled post-war setting. The result is a gripping account of murder, misogyny and spectatorship that has implications well beyond the tragic orbit of the case itself. A haunting, thought-provoking, deeply unsettling book -- Sarah Waters, author of FINGERSMITH There are few authors whose work I look forward to as much as Kate Summerscale’s, and The Peepshow does not disappoint. It is a forensic reappraisal of a grimy episode in postwar British history; at once shocking, impeccably researched, lucidly written and always utterly compelling -- Graeme Macrae Burnet, author of HIS BLOODY PROJECT A crystalline, compelling account of a notorious crime . . . Seamlessly blends the pleasures of a good novel with the enlightenment of masterly reportage. A gem -- Dominic Nolan, author of VINE STREET I blame The Peepshow for too many late nights, when I simply couldn't put it down. Horrifying, intriguing and entertaining in equal measure -- Becky Holmes The Peepshow is a masterclass in true crime storytelling. Stark and compulsive it tells a story both of murder and those who write about it in a way that is as relevant now as it was in the 1950’s. Focused on the lives of those impacted and the victims of John Christie’s terrible crimes, The Peepshow is hugely insightful about a time and place now long gone, yet incredibly familiar -- Jennie Godfrey, author of THE LIST OF SUSPICIOUS THINGS This intelligent and implacable account of a notorious post-war horror proves that no established memory of the past is definitive. The Peepshow is ruthless for truth, for previously unregarded details that expose the true horrors of a conflicted landscape, internal and external. This re-visioning of a dark London nightmare has the rigour and complexity of the best novels -- Iain Sinclair Kate Summerscale’s multi-layered page-turner The Peepshow, which inverts the classic true crime structure, is masterful. The mystery is not who committed a series of murders in 1950s London but whether there had been a gross miscarriage of justice, as told through one tabloid reporter’s attempt to redeem himself by revealing it. It’s also an unflinching examination of the true crime industry — a look at the boundary between making visible the unseen and the exploitation of tragedy — and no one, not even the reader, escapes complicity -- Becky Cooper Summerscale rebuilds the dark past with such captivating intelligence that she makes eyewitnesses of us all -- Laurence Scott Gripping as a thriller and supremely atmospheric, The Peepshow gazes inside the murder house of 10 Rillington Place and reveals, beyond that, the bombed-out post-war Britain that this sad, sordid, significant case both fascinated and reflected. Superb story-telling from the queen of true crime -- Laura Thompson, author of TAKE SIX GIRLS Quite apart from its superb pacing and prose, its deep social history, there is a brilliant strain of feminism * Laura Cumming (on X/Twitter), author of THUNDERCLAP *