Brothers: The trial of the Brothers Hosein for the murder of Mrs. McKay

by William Cooper

As bell-clear as ""Yes, my Lord,"" this courtroom documentary of a case which spanned three and a half weeks of alert attention in the old Bailey in the fall of 1970 when the two brothers Hosein, Arthur and Nizamodeen, were accused of kidnapping, imprisoning and murdering one Mrs. McKay although the corpus was never delicti. Following her disappearance, there was the phone call -- ""it is the M3, the Mafia"" -- and a letter asking her husband to cooperate with the sum of one million pounds handed over in two white suitcases. The brothers, one considerably older, one a ""stranger in a strange land,"" were pulled in from their home at Rook's Farm where some proliferating coincidences (fingerprints, twine, paper and paper flowers, a billhook) all contributed to the hard-to-beat assumption of their guilt. Mr. Cooper handles the case and its inherent elements of reasonable doubt with admirable and authoritative composure.

Genres: True Crime

220 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

H.S. Hoff (William Cooper) was an English novelist, born in Crewe. After graduating from Christ's College, Cambridge in 1933 he became a science teacher in Leicester, an experience on which he seems to have drawn for his novel, Scenes from Provincial Life. Hoff served in the Royal Air Force in World War II, and later became a civil servant, associating closely with C. P. Snow, who appears in light disguise as Robert in Scenes from Provincial Life and its sequels. After retiring he held an academic position with Syracuse University, New York, lecturing on English literature to its students in London.

Hoff wrote four novels between 1934 and 1946 under his own name but made his reputation with his first novel under the pen name William Cooper, Scenes from Provincial Life (1950), the first of five more or less autobiographical novels published over the ensuing half century.

Hoff wrote 17 novels in all as well as short stories, two plays and a biography of his friend C.P.Snow. In 1971 he published an account of the trial of the Hosein brothers.

[from Wikipedia]