Dancing for the Hangman

While this fictional recreation of one of the early 20th century’s most notorious crimes ranks among Edwards’s best work, it has the misfortune to follow two superior books on the subject: Erik Larson’s nonfiction Thunderstruck (2006) and John Boyne’s Crippen: A Novel of Murder (2007). In a nice framing device, Dr. Hawley Crippen, as he sits in his jail cell in 1910 awaiting his date with the executioner, describes his life and the events that are bringing him to the scaffold, in particular the vicissitudes of his marriage to his second wife, Cora, of whose murder he was convicted. Edwards (Waterloo Sunset) offers an alternative, if somewhat implausible version of how Cora died that supports Crippen’s claim of innocence. Many readers, however, will find Crippen, who abandoned his son and took up with his mistress shortly after Cora’s death, a far from sympathetic narrator. Those looking for more depth should turn to Larson and Boyne. (Dec.)