Death in the Air
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Average rating3.8
In winter 1952, London automobiles and thousands of coal-burning hearths belched particulate matter into the air. But the smog that descended on December 5th of 1952 was different; it was a type that held the city hostage for five long days. Mass transit ground to a halt, criminals roamed the streets, and 12,000 people died. That same month, there was another killer at large in London: John Reginald Christie, who murdered at least six women. In a braided narrative that draws on extensive interviews, never-before-published material, and archival research, Dawson captivatingly recounts the intersecting stories of the these two killers and their longstanding impact on modern history.
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When I heard about a book about the Great Smog I was intrigued and eager to read it. And yet I'm finding this book difficult to read. The smog is over...why am I supposed to care about a girl watching the coronation, how does it relate? Let's jump to politics and pretend that is a story... McLeod, Norman, Dodd... politicians, not characters fleshed out enough for me to care about or be able to differentiate who is who when it's reported fragmented between other bits. Debate across party lines...cut to the outcome. How any of this relates to the serial murders for these to be interspersed with each other, I don't get.
I've learned a bit, but it's not a grabbing read.
I knew a little bit about the smog of 1952 (probably due to “The Crown”) and a lot about Reg Christie (thanks to true crime podcast Murder Mile) but found every bit of this book enthralling. Even the bits about parliamentary debates between Norman Dodds and Tories who tried to cover up the smog deaths. I loved the stories about individual families and victims of the smog, which humanized the catastrophe in a way that statistics can't. Ultimately, for me, the Reg Christie storyline served as macabre entertainment between more interesting sections about the smog.
