Neither is the study of crime in wartime a new idea, as can be seen in the bibliography to this new contribution to the literature by Professor Amy Helen Bell of the University of Western Ontario.

The professor offers a new perspective on wartime murders by narrating the known facts, “telling the story”, from the involvement of the key individuals, “both victims and perpetrators”.

The general and vivid descriptions of extreme wartime conditions of society in London are accompanied by close studies of relevant criminal cases.
Perhaps there is too much narrative of the details of the individual crimes and the participants, and not enough of the appalling conditions in wartime society then, principally from bombing.

This is not to say that the crimes studied are uninteresting: the case of Harry Dobkin tried for the murder of his wife is fascinating for the detection of a crime, and proof of responsibility.

Perhaps there is too much danger in focusing on a single city, albeit the place where there was the heaviest and most sustained bombing, and the greatest loss of life and destruction of property.

Industrial cities across the United Kingdom all experienced the similarly, admittedly not to the same extent as London, and murders were surely committed in not dissimilar conditions.

In London, however, there was a transient population of civilians, and the vast numbers of members of the armed forces of many countries. The latter were often dealt with in the military jurisdiction.

It is questionable whether the London murders identified were unique but they certainly count amongst the best known, possibly because of the near presence of a national press.

The value of this study lies in the links identified and explained between wartime conditions where deaths were simply missed and events after the conflicts in Europe and the Far East had ended.

Notably, the discovery of bodies in the house at 10 Rillington Place could be shown to have been there for a decade or so from wartime. The crimes at that place certainly need to be considered now from the view of a continuity of purpose during and well after the war that was not made as clear by other historians of crime.

Perhaps a mysterious aspects of these murders in the blackout was the ability of the civilian police to investigate serious crime, report it and the criminal courts to deal with them.

This is a history of a certain category of crime that makes for very compelling reading, and the reader must be left wondering what other serious crimes might now reconsidered in wartime conditions.

Under Cover of Darkness: Murders in Blackout London by Amy Helen Bell. Published by Yale University Press, 272pp, £24.