The Maul and the Pear Tree: Ratcliffe Highway Murders, 1811 - Softcover

P.D. James; T.A. Critchley

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140131868 ISBN 13: 9780140131864

Publisher: Penguin Books Canada, Limited, 1991

Synopsis

The mystery writer and a police historian draw on original research to reconstruct the crimes known as the Radcliffe Highway murders, a series of particularly brutal murders that shocked Regency London

About this title

About the Author:

P. D. James was born in Oxford in 1920 and educated at Cambridge High School for Girls. From 1949 to 1968 she worked in the National Health Service and subsequently in the Home Office, first in the Police Department and later in the Criminal Policy Department. All that experience has been used in her novels. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Royal Society of the Arts and has served as a Governor of the BBC, a member of the Arts Council, where she was Chairman of its Literary Advisory Panel, on the Board of the British Council and as a magistrate in Middlesex and London. She has won awards for crime writing in Britain, America, Italy and Scandinavia, including the Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster Award. She has received honorary degrees from seven British universities, was awarded an OBE in 1983 and was created a life peer in 1991. In 1997 she was elected President of the Society of Authors.She lives in London and Oxford and has two daug

From Publishers Weekly:

In 1811, London's East End was the scene of a series of murders so brutal and irrational that they caused panic throughout the city, which lacked a central police force. This engrossing account, marking the American nonfiction debut of British mystery novelist James, details the seven vicious ("brains battered out and throats butchered"), apparently motiveless slayings (which occurred first in a linen shop, then, days later, in a nearby pub); the confused efforts of local "police" groups; and the cases' suspiciously abrupt closing after suspect John Williams, a seaman and lodger at the Pear Tree public house, committed suicide in jail, thereby sealing his "guilt" and prompting a bizarre parade of his corpse (together with a murderous maul) throughout the city. James and police historian Critchley use documents and contemporary news accounts splendidly, pointing up the incompetence of the investigators and offering an intriguing view of what really happened. First published in Britain in 1971, this will certainly please James's following here.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books Canada, Limited
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0140131868
• ISBN 13: 9780140131864
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256