The Peepshow

The thrilling new page-turner from Britain’s top-selling true crime writer

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The Peepshow

By: Kate Summerscale

Narrated by: Nicola Walker

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Bloomsbury presents The Peepshow by Kate Summerscale, read by Nicola Walker.

FROM BRITAIN'S TOP-SELLING TRUE CRIME WRITER
WINNER OF THE CWA ALCS GOLD DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION
A BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR: The Times/Sunday Times, Financial Times, Spectator, Independent, Tablet and New Statesman

'I loved it' Richard Osman
'Shattering' Val McDermid
'Gripping' Sarah Waters

In 1953, the bodies of three young women are found by a tenant in the walls of a Notting Hill house. He tells the police that he chanced upon them while trying to put up a shelf for his transistor radio.

As a series of further horrors are discovered, the eyes of a nation turn to 10 Rillington Place.

In this riveting tale of violence, misogyny and tabloid frenzy, Kate Summerscale lifts the veil on what really happened inside the house - and suggests a new solution to one of the twentieth century's most notorious crimes.

LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2025
©2024 Kate Summerscale (P)2024 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Kate SummerscaleNicola WalkerBloomsbury Circus

Art & Literature

Europe

Great Britain

Journalists, Editors & Publishers

Judicial Systems

Law

Social Sciences

True Crime

Violence in Society

Crime

Murder

Exciting

Scary

Art & Literature Europe Great Britain Journalists, Editors & Publishers Judicial Systems Law Social Sciences True Crime Violence in Society Crime Murder Exciting Scary

Critic reviews

A gripping, pacily written peek into a lost world

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)

Summons up a murky London underworld . . . The Peepshow examines the macabre saga with tremendous skill and verve

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)

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)

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)

This stranger-than-fiction case unpacks a series of sensational murders that rocked 1950s London after four bodies were discovered in a North Kensington apartment . . . Summerscale, the multiple-award-winning author of five previous books, brings a novelist’s eye and a sociologist’s understanding to a trove of thrilling material

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)

Most relevant

This was exactly what I hoped for.. v much not a salacious retelling of an extremely unpleasant set of murders but rather the social history of the era in which the crimes took place and the effects of class, race, gender and media portrayal on them.