Nigeyb’s Reviews > North Soho 999: A True Story of Gangs and Gun-Crime in 1940s London > Status Update

Mrs Violet Van der Elst

Robert Churchill confirms that the gun found in the muddy foreshaw at Wapping by a schoolboy was the one that fired the shot which killed Alec de Antiquis in Charlotte Street on 29 April 1947. The net is closing in. Loving this book.

Jenkins released. The hunt continues.

One of this country’s biggest and most extraordinary murder-hunts, it brought together the pioneering forensic pathologist, Sir Bernard Spilsbury; the hangman, Albert Pierrepoint; the crusading journalist, Duncan Webb; and the Scotland Yard detective, Bob Fabian whose dazzling detective work led to the creation of Fabian of the Yard, the world’s first hit television cop show.

Detailed but interesting account of police procedures.

Detective Inspector Bob Higgins was also involved in investigating 'The Blackout Ripper' murders. Coincidently I read about him in "Without the Moon" which is, in part, Cathi Unsworth's fictionalised account of Gordon Cummins aka The Blackout Ripper.

Predictably compelling, absorbing opening to this account of the murder that came to symbolise the crimewave threatening to overwhelm post-war London. Set in bomb-scarred London in 1947, it is the untold story of a Soho robbery and shooting carried out by a 17 year-old and his two young accomplices. Paul Willetts does it again.

Good introduction by Paul Willetts in which he describes the research which he undertook with his customary rigour, and how everything in the book is based on this research.