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Murder on the Home Front

a gripping murder mystery set during the Blitz - now on Netflix!

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Murder on the Home Front

By: Molly Lefebure
Narrated by: Lucy Scott
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It is 1941. There may be a 'war of chaos' in the skies over London, but 'the perpetual war against the underworld of crime' must nevertheless continue on the streets below.

At 12 o'clock on a Spring day in a London Coroner's Court, famed forensic pathologist Dr Keith Simpson asks young journalist Molly Lefebure if she might like to become his secretary. Recalling the 'horror of secretarial work and secretarial young ladies', she turns him down flat, resolving to stick to twelve-hour days covering 'everything from Boy Scout meetings to the blitz'.

By 3 o'clock that afternoon, curious about exactly what goes on behind a mortuary door, Molly has changed her mind. It is the beginning of an extraordinary adventure. 'Miss Molly' becomes Dr Simpson's right-hand woman, following him to crime scenes, courtrooms and mortuaries, taking notes, collecting evidence and witnessing the most shocking of sights.

'You'll never regret going to work in the mortuaries, Miss Molly,' a coroner's officer told her. 'There's never a dull moment with the bodies around.'©1955 Molly Lefebure Crime Historical True Crime Murder England
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I have thoroughly enjoyed this book, both audibly and hard copy. I would recommend it to anyone interested in crime and forensics

home front

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Loved it. I just about to read / listen to my third book on the trot by this author. I think I like her!

I love this author

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Utterly enthralling, entertaining and edgy. This book will have you unable to stop listening. Well written and a fantastic new women’s perspective.

Brilliant

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In 1941, Molly Lefebure was a newspaper reporter. While following a case at Walthamstow Coroner’s Court, she was offered a secretarial job by renowned pathologist Dr (Cedric) Keith Simpson (who she then refers to affectionately as CKS throughout the rest of the book). As she wanted to be a writer, Molly eventually decided to accept the offer as she felt it would provide good experience and knowledge.



So, while World War 2 raged on and London was living through the Blitz, Molly was travelling across London and much of the south east visiting murder scenes, helping Simpson examine bodies and going to trials.



Molly walked an average 12 miles a day, worked from 8.30am to 10.30pm, seven days a week and was paid a starting salary of £1 a week. She also had to deal with people’s perceptions of her new role. There is a fabulous passage about the difference between the reactions between male and female friends, when they are alone, or in mixed company.



Peppered amongst the quite vivd descriptions of murders and trials, there is a lot of talk of lunch, tea and sardine sandwiches. The first night after she’d started the role, her landlady served her up a pork chop, and Molly reflected that if she didn’t eat it then, she would be likely to have turned vegetarian. So she made sure she ate it!



There was so much to love about this book – not just the interesting (sometimes high profile) cases, but insight into the judicial system (murderers were still hung at this time) and a matter-of-fact account of every day life living during the war (on 23rd August 1944, Molly would have loved to have been celebrating the liberation of Paris, but found herself eating sardine sandwiches and catching a train to Ashford together with armies of families of hop-pickers – including all their belongings, screaming children and cats & dogs!).



Molly gave up the job when she became engaged and originally this book was published in 1

Murder, war, trials and sardine sandwiches

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The narrator takes a job as secretary to a pathologist during WW2 and her subsequent memoir becomes a really interesting piece of social history. It's fascinating to hear about the long hours the pathologists (and the police) had to work and the awful conditions they worked in. The descriptions of the tragic deaths of the people - who became the corpses they worked on - are very moving. Molly Lefebure has no compassion at all for the murderers, although some of them came from dreadful backgrounds and led hopeless lives, culminating in a squalid death; I think this shows her privileged position in society, but I did find it upsetting.
It's not the kind of thing I can listen to without breaks and it's also too creepy to listen to when you're on your own at night...
The narration is very good indeed, just the right kind of voice.

Fascinating and slightly creepy

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