My Weekly Book

The Maul and the Pear Tree – PD James and TA Critchley

They say that nothing under the sun is new, but I am quite excited. I have discovered a genre that I never really noticed existed before. It is historical true crime and this is the third example that I have read in quite a short space of time, so I must be enjoying it greatly. First up was Patricia Cornwell’s Portrait of a Killer, which claims to solve the Jack the Ripper murders - a bit unwisely in my view, because if she’d been less ambitious in her scope she’d probably have come in for a lot less stick. Just my humble opinion. But anyway, I really the book and found the conclusions she came to fascinating. Then, plucked off the local library shelf was an excellent account of London’s Cock Lane Ghost written by Paul Chambers. This one isn’t about a murder as such, though one of the protagonists only just got away with his life after a barefaced attempt to pervert the course of justice nearly saw him hanged.

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The third of these historical true crime stories has been sitting around for some time. It occupies part of the extensive section of real estate on my bookshelves dedicated to PD James (almost everything is there now, apart from The Children of Men, the premise of which leaves me cold). It seems apt that the modern-day Queen of Crime should turn her hand to the true-crime genre, but she doesn’t do it in some trashy, tabloid fashion, oh no. In fact every example of this genre I have read has been the subject of meticulous research and the James contribution features a return to all available primary sources plus a collaboration with a noted police historian, Tom Critchley. The book is a tour of the dark streets of riverside Wapping and most of the locations, such as The Highway, Pennington Street, the church of St George in the East, New Gravel Lane (now Wapping Lane) and the area that was once the London Dock will be perfectly familiar to anyone who knows the area today. I used to work in neighbouring East Smithfield and spent countless lunchtimes prowling round here trying to relate historical and contemporary geography. A task that is a lot easier now the Museum of London has opened its outpost in Docklands, but that is another story.

This tale is about seven brutal murders, of two families and their servants, and then a subsequent suicide that all took place shortly before Christmas in 1811. It documents the public panic and moral outrage that followed and the confusion and muddle-headedness that characterised the official investigation. It also attempts to tease out any threads of evidence from the confusing and contradictory depositions given at the time that might lead modern-day readers to make a guess at the identity of the killer - or killers. If anything the authors err slightly on the side of meticulousness, allowing themselves very little speculation to the extent where I finished reading it and thought: “Is that it? Aren’t you even going to say what you think happened?” TA Critchley’s interest in police history is very evident, as is PD James’ sure hand with a story and we are rewarded for our attention with a convincing hypothesis which, tantalisingly, is never likely to be proved. An interesting and satisfying book which also proved a surprising page-turner.

Some links:

• NY Times book review
• Contemporary Writers: PD James
• Crime library: The Ratcliffe Highway Murders
• Thames Police: The Ratcliffe Highway Murders
• EastLondonHistory.com: The Ratcliffe Highway Murders
• Wikipedia:The Ratcliffe Highway murders
• The Museum of London in Docklands

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 7th, 2007 at 4:18 pm and is filed under 2007 reading challenge, Reads I recommend. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.