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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, by Kate Winkler Dawson

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Review

"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 New York Times bestselling author of The Monster of Florence and The Lost City of the Monkey God   "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, New York Times bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman   "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)   "How have we forgotten this incredible story? A deadly environmental disaster visited upon modern London, a serial killer stalking women at its zenith--this is a tale dying to be told. Death in the Air is a stunning debut by a writer you will be hearing about for years to come. It's just a great book.'' --Bryan Burrough, New York Times bestselling author of Public Enemies and Barbarians at the Gate   "Kate Winkler Dawson's Death in the Air: The True Story of a Serial Killer, The Great London Smog, and the Strangling of a City is a stellar examination of a turbulent time in the city's history. . . . Dawson's background in documentaries and journalism makes this journey more than just a retelling of the facts. She tracked down people who lived it, and now readers will vividly experience that period as well." --Associated Press   "Ms. Dawson, a journalist and documentary producer, is an assiduous researcher...her portraits of the ordinary people confronted by the depredations of the fog and Christie are moving. Ms. Dawson cogently argues that the Conservative government's response to the crisis was shameful: It did everything it could, seemingly, to cover up the extent of the catastrophe and avoid addressing the emergency." --Wall Street Journal "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   "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   "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   "Kate Winkler Dawson has a born storyteller's gift for building suspense and momentum and a keen eye for telling details, and her narrative poses a powerful moral question: who's the worse killer--a madman who strangles seven women and a baby, or government officials whose staggering indifference allows thousands to die in the great London smog of 1952? Dawson captures the whole sad mess in a heartbreaking, page-turning account that almost literally grips you by the throat as the government, the police, the press, and the medical profession all fail in their fundamental duty to preserve and protect the city's most vulnerable residents." --Glenn Frankel, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of High Noon and The Searchers   "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, New York Times bestselling author of Lost Girls   "A killer fog. A killer loose amidst it. Dawson does what skilled storytellers do: drops you in a London peopled by finely etched characters and keeps you turning pages through the twist and turns of a harrowing case." --Joe Drape, New York Times bestselling author of American Pharoah and Our Boys   "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   "For five days in December of that year, London was blanketed by a yellow toxic vapor that smothered its inhabitants. Journalist Kate Winkler Dawson has written an intriguing book about this silent disaster, which was borne out of a perfect storm of freak weather patterns and environmental ignorance. . . . The lessons for the present, Dawson suggests, are as clear as the air in front of our eyes." --Maureen Corrigan, "Fresh Air" "What's scarier: A murderous madman (now known to be John Reginald Christie) or an environmental disaster?" --Los Angeles Times   "Death in the Air is an enlightening look at two lesser known but important events in British history, for both had far-reaching consequences." --Minneapolis Star Tribune   "Deeply researched and densely atmospheric." --New York Times Book Review "A gripping read that illuminates two dark crimes: The political scandal of London's Great Smog of 1952, which killed an estimated 12,000 people; and the frightening deeds of a human killer both demented and mundane." --Dallas Morning News   "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, New York Times bestselling author of Empire of the Summer Moon and Rebel Yell   "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." --Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich, author of The Fact of a Body   "This dark and disturbing tale of murder, deception, and killer smog in 1952 London serves as a vivid warning about what can happen when we destroy the environment, systems break down, and, well, a couped up, dormant serial killer feels the need to act out his twisted fantasies--again." --Dean King, bestselling author of Skeletons on the Zahara and The Feud   "In 1952, post-World War II London was battling more than reconstruction, and Kate Winkler Dawson's Death in the Air: The True Story of a Serial Killer, The Great London Smog, and the Strangling of a City is a stellar examination of a turbulent time in the city's history. . . . Dawson's background in documentaries and journalism makes this journey more than just a retelling of the facts. She tracked down people who lived it, and now readers will vividly experience that period as well." --Associated Press   "In her debut book Death in the Air, University of Texas journalism lecturer and Austin native Kate Winkler Dawson weaves together two terrifying events: the Great Smog that settled over London for five days in 1952 and the gruesome discovery that a serial killer, John Reginald Christie, had been living coincidentally in the city at the same time. Dawson spent two years researching the book, delving into everything from autopsy reports and trial transcripts to eyewitness accounts by people who survived the fog." --Austin Monthly   "Journalist Dawson writes the parallel, shocking histories of the suffocating smog that menaced London, ultimately killing thousands, in December 1952, and a serial killer's salacious murders and trial the following year. Focusing on the powerful press' response to both killers and offering food for thought on what constitutes crime, responsibility, and progress, Dawson delves into heated parliamentary debates between Churchill's Conservative cabinet and Laborite agitators; first-person accounts from doctors, policemen, and other smog survivors; court records; and Christie's own, jaw-dropping account of his murders." --Booklist

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About the Author

Kate Winkler Dawson is a seasoned documentary producer, whose work has appeared in The New York Times, WCBS News and ABC News Radio, Fox News Channel, United Press International, PBS NewsHour, and Nightline. She teaches journalism at The University of Texas at Austin.

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Product details

Hardcover: 352 pages

Publisher: Hachette Books; First Edition edition (October 17, 2017)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0316506869

ISBN-13: 978-0316506861

Product Dimensions:

6.5 x 1.1 x 9.4 inches

Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review:

3.9 out of 5 stars

71 customer reviews

Amazon Best Sellers Rank:

#305,006 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

This book interweaves accounts of the likely murders committed by serial killer John Reginald Christie with the blanketing, sulfuric fog that hit London in 1952 and the tragedy the fog brought into the lives of some individuals. Author Kate Dawson alternates the fabrics of these three grim and grimy narratives, so you get a patch of this – then a patch of that. Sometimes this technique might leave the reader feeling a little frustrated, dangling on the end of one too many cliffhangers, as in the old “Perils of Pauline” silent film shorts. Christie seems about to strike – then we get switched to a debate in Parliament about how the fog's affects could be mitigated.The fog and the Christie murders don't really have anything to do with each other. Christie didn't commit his murders under cover of the fog. But together, these reports do paint an interesting picture of the struggles of post-war England. This is a good book to have in your library, but I feel it could have used a little more editing. Here are some of the details of style and content that tripped me up a bit:There's a lot of repetition here. Several dozen times we read how the fog was “creeping, insinuating, curling in” everywhere. After about the twentieth time of reading that the smog was slithering its way through every crack and crevice, I felt like calling out, “Enough already! I get it!”Dawson oddly uses first names when writing about some people, then changes to the more formal, distancing use of last names when she writes about other people. It's disturbing to see Christie consistently and cozily referred to as “Reg.” It's as if someone writing about the life and crimes of John Wayne Gacy continuously referred to him as “John-boy.” It conveys the wrong affect. But Dawson's decisions about how to refer to all the individuals in the book are puzzling. Policeman are always given their designating initials (DCI, PC, etc.) and then are referred to by their last names. Doctors are most often referred to by their first names. Liberal MP's such as Labour Party leader Norman Dodds are almost always referred to as “Norman,” whereas Conservative MP Harold Macmillan is always “Macmillan.”There is perhaps a somewhat unwarranted Liberal bias here. Conservative leaders Macmillan, Churchill, and the up-and-coming Margaret Thatcher, are portrayed as the bad guys. Dawson does end up making a case that the Tory Government's attitude toward the thousands of smog deaths was cavalier and indifferent. But it's hard to see what anyone could have been done in the moment. As Dawson herself admits, Britain was forced to export its good coal to help pay its staggering national debt in the wake of the War. That left only the dirty “nutty slack” to be made available to the majority of householders to use as coal fuel.I wish Dawson had spent more time describing the weather conditions that contributed to this deadly smog. I would have liked to better understand how “anticyclones' played a roll – how cold weather capped the smoke being generated by the myriad coal-burning homes and industries.I also sort of wish Dawson had used this book as the occasion to do a little sleuthing on her own rather than just reporting the crimes in straight, police-blotter fashion. Indeed it seems possible there were some threads of clues she might have followed. For example, in one of several slightly confusing flashback accounts given here, Dawson tells about the alleged crimes committed by another inhabitant of 10 Rillington place – the either hapless or vicious (depending on how you look at it) Tim Evans who lived with his wife and baby in the flat above Christie. Several years before the worst spate of Christie's killings, the Evans wife and baby had been found dead in the building's wash-house. There followed a long series of contradictory confessions and recantations by everyone involved. However, Tim Evans ended on the note of accusing Christie of having killed his wife and baby. When prosecution showed how the dead baby had been found with a striped tie wrapped around its neck, Evans denied ever having owned a striped tie, and it seems that at the moment at least, this part of his testimony was taken at face value. However, there starring us in the face in Dawson's photo section of the book – we see Tim Evans standing with his wife and baby in happier times, wearing a vividly striped tie! It's the Bruno Magli shoes all over again.Finally, I wish Dawson had given more credit to the movie 10 Rillington Place. She dismisses it in a footnote as an “advocacy piece.” Actually, I found it to be a riveting work with brilliant acting by Richard Attenborough and John Hurt. However right or wrong the movie is in its stand about the guilt of Tim Evans, it does bring Christie searingly to life, in all his sinister, suggestive softness.But all the above are relatively minor faults in this generally good book. Dawson transports us back to the life of many average working people everywhere in the 1950's – with the coal chutes - the still numerous outhouses – the need to go down the street to the home of the one relative who had a TV set - the criminal trials in which investigation, conviction, and execution, all took place within a matter of weeks - the general lack of people's connectedness. It all will probably make you glad to be living now, rather than back in what were, for many, those even meaner times.

Excellent true story about the strangling of thousands of people from air pollution and a serial killer in the 1940s and 1950s in the UK. Kate Winkler Dawson weaves these two stories that occurred at the same time together well. She humanizes the victims and pays extra attention to the details of their lives in a way that makes the reader/listener care about them. Graeme Malcom is a gem to listen to and having a Brit narrate a British story was an important choice. It was also interesting to see the parallels of the British government debating the cause of the London Smog and minimizing the effect of it for years with current government officials minimizing similar atrocities. The book is well worth a read or listen as you learn about John Reginald Christie and the Great London Smog. I have both the Kindle and Audible versions.

An account of two killers who struck London in December of 1952. One was front page news and readily discussed in Parliament. An unassuming man, John Reginald Christie, seemingly an invalid but who still managed to kill and dispose of several women over a period of years. The second wiped out thousands, but was largely ignored in Parliament except for by the dogged insistence of MP Norman Dodds. The weather plus the pollution of December 1952 turned the ordinary London fog into a mixture that killed many thousands. This is the story of how one made more news than the other, and how both impacted English laws.This was a fascinating read. It is a bit horrifying how the government turned a blind eye to how horrible coal was for the environment for so long because it wasn't convenient for their economic plans. Yikes! But there is ultimately hope in that people like Dodds can force the government to do what is right by refusing to give up championing a cause. This story is the start of the story of bettering the air quality of England. Change didn't happen quickly at all, but it eventually did start. I liked that the author chose to tell this story mostly through the stories of everyday people. She interviewed and tells about the smog from the viewpoint of a young teen, a cop on the streets, a doctor, and Norman Dodds. It does mean you have to keep track of more people as the book bounces between the smog and Christie's stories, but in the end it makes it more memorable for being told from the viewpoint of people who lived it. This book is also quite the commentary on how sensationalism is what makes news and how what makes news influences the government. The Christie case was most interesting in the way that it impacted the death sentence in England. Recommended to those interested in true crime, the way government policies are changed, and environmental history.Notes on content: Just a couple minor swears in quotations. Christie liked to kill his victims either during intercourse or violate them after he killed them. That is related matter of factly, like you'd read in a newspaper. The Christie killings are all strangulations, so not bloody but cold and brutal. Several agonizing deaths from the smog are related and deadly crashes because of the fog are also related.

I grew up in the west London suburbs in the 50's. This is a very accurate description of the awful yellow/green fogs we called pea soupers. I used to make pocket money guiding automobiles down the road with a torch (flashlight), the forward visibility was under 10 feet. I can't remember any government health warnings, but soon after we were prohibited from burning coal and could only burn coke. I remember the phrase "nutty slack" but all I remember is burning anthracite coal. The coal man delivered the coal in 112lb (hundredweight) sacks, we had a separate coal bunker outside the house and it was my chore to go fill the coal bucket in the evenings.I highly recommend this book as an example of working folks lives in the London winters. I also remember the news articles on Christie, but as a child I knew very few of the details.

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