Death in the Air

“Deeply researched and densely atmospheric,” a true crime account of a serial killer who acted under cover of London’s historic environmental catastrophe. (New York Times Book Review)

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. Some twelve thousand 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. 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?

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.

“Not since The Devil in the White City has a book told such a harrowing tale.” ―Douglas Preston, #1 New York Times–bestselling author of The Monster of Florence

“Intriguing. . . The lessons for the present . . . are as clear as the air in front of our eyes.” ―Maureen Corrigan, “Fresh Air”

“A stellar examination.” ―Associated Press