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CRIPPEN
by John Boyne
Thomas Dunne Books, March 2006
352 pages
$24.95
ISBN: 0312343582


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

In 1910, on a cruise ship going from Antwerp, Belgium to New York, the passengers and crew don't know that amongst them is an escaping murderer and his girlfriend. The man is Hawley Crippen, who poisoned his wife and cut up her body and buried everything in the basement. He is traveling as a Mr John Robinson and his girlfriend is traveling disguised as his teenage son Edmund.

Traveling incognito isn't that easy, as all the people on board the ship make it their hobby to get to know each other and decide how to spend their time traveling with their new acquaintances. A rich nosy woman and her spoiled daughter do their best to flirt with Mr Robinson and son while another man and his ward tend to get involved with all on the ship.

It's not long until the first mate discovers Mr Robinson and his son in a passionate embrace, and he tells the captain that Edmond is not a teenage boy. Using the radio the captain gets in touch with Scotland Yard.

The detective in charge of the murder investigation case, Scotland Yard Inspector Walter Dew is still smarting that, thinking him innocent, he had become friends with the killer and made the mistake of letting him escape.

All of England is buzzing about the horrible deed and so Inspector Drew follows on another ship to capture the fleeing killer. Which he does and brings them back to England where the famous trial takes place and history is made.

That's the whole of the story. No, I didn't ruin the mystery for the readers. The full story is pretty much outlined on the book cover and the story is a real case following the true escape attempt and the famous trial of wife killer Hawley Crippen.

Since the readers know from the get go that the boy on the ship is really a young woman accompanying her fleeing lover from a famous murder investigation in 1910 England, I wondered where the mystery was. There's no tension anywhere as the outcome is well known. I'd guess that the real mystery is the reason this book was written.

Usually in a period piece the writer will introduce you to a different location and time period, painting a picture filled with details of the period, pointing out important historical occurrences of the time and highlighting the differences in life with cultural and language examples. CRIPPEN has none of that.

It's written without any sense of time. The descriptions of the clothing fit the 1800s as well as 1910, the dialogue includes a phrase like, "It turned him on," which sounded like the 1970s. When a young woman announces she's going to college to become a lawyer, no one mentions that it's unusual, even though women have yet to get the vote in the US.

More like a writing assignment using well-known characters in an outline, CRIPPEN didn't add anything to the original story. I finished the book and couldn't figure out why it had been written. Pass on CRIPPEN.

Reviewed by Sharon Katz, April 2006

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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