Death in the Air, Kate Winkler Dawson
Death in the Air, Kate Winkler Dawson
3 Rating(s)
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Death in the Air
The True Story of a Serial Killer, the Great London Smog, and the Strangling of a City

Author: Kate Winkler Dawson

Narrator: Graeme Malcolm

Unabridged: 9 hr 30 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/17/2017

Synopsis

A real-life thriller in the vein of The Devil in the White City, Kate Winkler Dawson's debut Death in the Air is a gripping, historical narrative of a serial killer, an environmental disaster, and an iconic city struggling to regain its footing.

London was still recovering from the devastation of World War II when another disaster hit: for five long days in December 1952, a killer smog held the city firmly in its grip and refused to let go. Day became night, mass transit ground to a halt, criminals roamed the streets, and some 12,000 people died from the poisonous air. But in the chaotic aftermath, another killer was stalking the streets, using the fog as a cloak for his crimes.

All across London, women were going missing--poor women, forgotten women. Their disappearances caused little alarm, but each of them had one thing in common: they had the misfortune of meeting a quiet, unassuming man, John Reginald Christie, who invited them back to his decrepit Notting Hill flat during that dark winter. They never left.

The eventual arrest of the "Beast of Rillington Place" caused a media frenzy: were there more bodies buried in the walls, under the floorboards, in the back garden of this house of horrors? Was it the fog that had caused Christie to suddenly snap? And what role had he played in the notorious double murder that had happened in that same apartment building not three years before--a murder for which another, possibly innocent, man was sent to the gallows?

The Great Smog of 1952 remains the deadliest air pollution disaster in world history, and John Reginald Christie is still one of the most unfathomable serial killers of modern times. Journalist Kate Winkler Dawson braids these strands together into a taut, compulsively readable true crime thriller about a man who changed the fate of the death penalty in the UK, and an environmental catastrophe with implications that still echo today.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Laurene on July 24, 2018

Interesting book. Emily, I think you and especially Chris might like this b/c it follows the Parliament trying to dig themselves out of WWII debt and dealing with getting rid of the cheapest energy from that time, coal. What a terrible time for London. And.....at one point there is mention of Croydo......more

Goodreads review by Katherine on March 20, 2018

This is a pretty good book about the lethal London fog of 1952 (estimated 12,000 deaths attributable to the fog and, no, I did not mistype that) welded to an okay-ish book about the serial killer John Reginald Christie in that structure that's become so popular lately of "Phenomenon A + Murderer B =......more

Goodreads review by Karl on August 07, 2021

A curiously structured book. First, a well-researched recounting of the stalled-weather front that created a smog event (and the invention of the word 'smog') in London, December 1952. 12,000 people were killed by the poisonous, particle-filled air (those with respiratory and circulatory health issu......more

Goodreads review by Biblio on September 13, 2017

This is the story of how the fog in London in the early 1950s, combined with emissions from factories and vehicles, and especially thanks to the unrationed and inferior coal dust nuggets known as nutty slack, killed thousands of Londoners and made life miserable for millions more. During the winter......more

Goodreads review by Jill on March 17, 2018

Kate Winkler Dawson has written a social history of London in December, 1952, when a "fog" of killer proportions blanketed the city for four days, killing hundreds of people, through asphyxiation and other respiratory problems. The book, "Death In the Air: The True Story of a Serial Killer, the Grea......more

Quotes

"Death in the Air by Kate Winkler Dawson is a fascinating, beautifully researched, and compulsively readable book, which tells the entwined stories of the Great London Smog of 1952 and a serial killer, John Reginald Christie, who exploited the fog as a cloak for murder. This is a portrait of London at one of its darkest and most desperate times. Not since The Devil in the White City has a book told such a harrowing tale."—Douglas Preston, #1 NewYork Times bestselling author of The Monster of Florence and TheLost City of the Monkey God

"A London peasouper hangs over the city as a serial killer stalks its streets! This is a true tale of criminal violence against the backdrop of one of the worst environmental disasters of all time, one that led to the death of 12,000 people. It is a narrative that has relevance to the world's pollution problems of today and is also an engrossing read."—Christine L. Corton,author of London Fog: The Biography

"I was seven, and living in London, when these two dreadful and murderous events uncoiled, and I--asthmatic as a result--remember them still. It seems to me that only an outsider, a non-Londoner, could possibly bring them so vividly, so excruciatingly and so unflinchingly back to life. Kate Winkler Dawson has done the history of my city a great service, and she is to be commended for telling a terrible tale memorably and brilliantly."—Simon Winchester, NewYork Times bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman

"Dawson deftly weaves the tales together in an engrossing narrative that reads like a thriller.... readers will remain hooked on this compelling story and will eagerly await Dawson's next book."—Kirkus

"A deranged maniac plays Fleet Street's reporters like a fiddle at the same time that an industrial-age climate disaster explodes into a full-blown humanitarian crisis. Richly detailed and shrewdly told, Kate Winkler Dawson's Death in the Air is as suspenseful as it is chillingly relevant."—Robert Kolker, NewYork Times bestselling author of Lost Girls

"Just when you think true crime can't get more interesting, here comes Kate Dawson with her imaginatively conceived and meticulously researched tale about Reg Christie, the fastidious, soft-voiced London clerk who embarks on a vicious killing spree in 1952 just as a deadly fog descends on London. But Death in the Air is hardly another study of a depraved serial killer. It's also a riveting history of London in the years after World War II--a city beset by political cover ups and misguided police investigations. Dawson's ability to weave together so many separate strands of one story is simply magnificent."—Skip Hollandsworth,author of The Midnight Assassin: The Hunt for America's First Serial Killer

"Dawson has reached deep into the past and pulled forth a spellbinding, darkly gothic tale of two serial killers--only one of which was human. Death in the Air surprised me, entranced me, and changed the way I see one of the most urgent issues facing the world today."—AlexandriaMarzano-Lesnevich, author of The Fact of a Body

"What's great about Death in the Air is not just its stunning premise, but also its deep reach into the life of London in the mid-twentieth century. It's a wonderful read. Welcome to the metaphysics of fog."—S. C. Gwynne, NewYork Times bestselling author of Empire of the Summer Moon and RebelYell

"Evocative . . . vividly atmospheric . . . The narratives add up to a grim, Dickensian portrait of postwar London: broke, grimy, dejected, deranged around the edges, and gasping for breath."—Publishers Weekly

"Tendrils of sickening fog creep everywhere in this book, and terror lurks in the shadows. Dawson skillfully weaves these two events into a substantial narrative that will appeal to all types of readers."—Library Journal (starred review)

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