A question of guilt

by Richard Gordon

Another vivid, grisly fictional reappraisal of a true crime case--by the crisply British author of Jack the Ripper and many other medically informed novels. Here Gordon interweaves the ever-familiar Crippen case with the story of two Crippen acquaintances: Dr. Eliot Beckett, who runs a free clinic in Edwardian London; and his nurse/lover Nancy--an American heiress whose tubercular sister ""Baby"" has died in a Swiss sanitorium. And among those who have offered advice on ""Baby's"" case is American-born nostrums peddler Hawley Harvey Crippen, a modest con man with vague medical credentials. So Eliot and Nancy have some inside views as the focus turns to Crippen's own domestic crisis: he's in love with typist Ethel Le Neve but married to Belle--a fat, adulterous, stupid-shrewd, would-be vaudevillian with expensive tastes. It is Ellot's copy of Gray's Anatomy, in fact, which provides Crippen with the necessary information for the murder: he poisons Belle, beheads her, eviscerates and debo