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    Murder on the Home Front: A True Story of Morgues, Murderers, and Mysteries during the London Blitz
    Unavailable
    Murder on the Home Front: A True Story of Morgues, Murderers, and Mysteries during the London Blitz
    Unavailable
    Murder on the Home Front: A True Story of Morgues, Murderers, and Mysteries during the London Blitz
    Audiobook10 hours

    Murder on the Home Front: A True Story of Morgues, Murderers, and Mysteries during the London Blitz

    Written by Molly Lefebure

    Narrated by Lucy Rayner

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    It is 1941. While the "war of chaos" rages in the skies above London, an unending fight against violence, murder and the criminal underworld continues on the streets below.

    One ordinary day, in an ordinary courtroom, forensic pathologist Dr. Keith Simpson asks a keen young journalist to be his secretary. Although the "horrors of secretarial work" don't appeal to Molly Lefebure, she's intrigued to know exactly what goes on behind a mortuary door.

    Capable and curious, "Miss Molly" quickly becomes indispensible to Dr. Simpson as he meticulously pursues the truth. Accompanying him from somber morgues to London's most gruesome crime scenes, Molly observes and assists as he uncovers the dark secrets that all murder victims keep.

    With a sharp sense of humor and a rebellious spirit, Molly tells her own remarkable true story here with warmth and wit, painting a vivid portrait of wartime London.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHachette Audio
    Release dateApr 1, 2014
    ISBN9781478902409
    Unavailable
    Murder on the Home Front: A True Story of Morgues, Murderers, and Mysteries during the London Blitz
    Author

    Molly Lefebure

    Molly Lefebure (1919-2013) was a wartime journalist, novelist, children’s author, writer on the topography of Cumbria, biographer, and independent scholar and lecturer. She is the author of two other works on the Coleridge family and a volume on the world of Thomas Hardy. Lefebure was a secretary to Professor Keith Simpson (1907–1985), the renowned Home Office Pathologist and head of the Department of Forensic Medicine at Guy’s Hospital, with whom she worked during the Second World War. While surrounded by London’s crime, grime and gruesome deaths she wrote a memoire, published as 'Evidence for the Crown' (1955), which formed the basis for the successful television drama, 'Murder on the Home Front' (ITV, 2013). Having been fascinated by her work in the mortuaries, Lefebure continued at Guy’s Hospital and studied drug addiction for six years, which led her to write her first biography of Coleridge ('Samuel Taylor Coleridge: A Bondage of Opium' 1974). 'Private Lives of the Ancient Mariner' is the distillation of the lifetime’s thought of one who many regard as having been one of the foremost Coleridgean scholars in the world.

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    Reviews for Murder on the Home Front

    3.5/5

    31 ratings5 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Slightly disappointing. I read Keith Simpson's Classic 40 years of Murder many years ago and loved it, and I expected this to be in similar vein. However, I guess since Miss Lefubure was only Professor Simpson's secretary and not a qualified forensic scientist I should not have expected this. In fact its written exactly how you'd imagine a giddy young secretary would write. Its all over the place, flitting breathlessly from one case to the next, skimming over some and delivering excruciating detail on others. This does detract from the enjoyment because the book feels, although it really isnt, quite superficial. Nevertheless, its still a good read, because forensics, however its written, is always interesting, and she does deal with some fascinating cases that are now largely forgotten. In the final analysis, though, if it had been more slightly more cleverly written, this could have been one of the classics of the true forensics genre. As it is, however, its simply mildly interesting.
    • 4/5
      This is Molly Lefebure's story about her time as a secretary to a forensic pathologist during WWII. It is such an interesting life she lead. Her story is filled with interesting crimes and is written with dry humor throughout. She is the first women secretary to ever have set foot into a mortuary. The crimes she describes are followed through from crime to court case and the reconstruction of how it happened. Once the bombing starts in London, it throws a whole new curve into her story. For anyone who is interested in true crime or WWII, this is a must read. We read for our book club and it made for a great discussion. Don't let this one slip by.
    • 3/5
      I haven't read Call the Midwife but I'm suspecting this re-release is intended to dovetail with that sort of interest in WWII/postWWII British life. This memoir was written by a woman who takes a job as a secretary/assistant to a coroner, with the implication that this position would have been reserved for a man, had there not been a shortage of male labor due to the war. So it's like Call the Midwife meets CSI.The best parts are the details about British daily life, and most strikingly, during the war. It's fascinating, and her writing about living and working in London during the bombings is amazingly touching. I also enjoyed the very real respect and affection she had for many of the people she met through this job.On the downside, there are many examples of that terrible affliction so many memoirs suffer from, where she gives you a heads up that some character or situation is SO funny or SO interesting and then she provides an example that makes no sense at all. She's also horrifically judgmental - at first, I willing to gloss over this, because it's a book written in its era, you know, different time, different place ... but after a while, it was very hard not to be thinking SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP when she'd start with her "wry" observations.One probably unintentional hilarious aspect was how often the murderer ended up being a Canadian soldier.
    • 3/5
      I listened to the audiobook and the narrator had an annoying squeaky voice and over-dramatize British accent which definitely took away from the stories.
    • 4/5
      This was first published back in 1955 with the title of Evidence for the Crown: Experiences of a Pathologist's Secretary. Molly Lefebure spent five years during WWII working as the secretary for Dr. Keith Simpson, a famous pathologist. It was unusual at the time for a woman to work in a mortuary and that is why Lefebure's experiences are so unique.I requested this book because I am always eager to learn more about WWII. This book was a bit different than others that I have read because this book concentrates on solving murders and doing postmortems in England during the war as opposed to efforts towards the war. It was really fascinating reading about how they continued to solve murders and deal with deaths while the war was taking place.This book could have been overly morbid but Molly Lefebure really brought a wry sense of humor and the trademark British stiff upper lip that were prevalent at the time. It was kind of weird to be chuckling at a book with so many dead bodies in it but it made it an enjoyable read. I have to admit though that I don't quite agree with all of Lefebure's opinions on certain things like hanging being a humane way to execute someone or how a woman should stay home and concentrate on her marriage (a least for a few years in the beginning) but I do understand that this was originally written back in the 1950's and times were different back then.Lefebure discusses some of the more famous murders and deaths that she worked on with Dr. Simpson and it was fascinating getting to read her observations of the cases. She also mentions cases that were not as famous and you really get a good understanding of them.This was an absolutely fascinating book and I would recommend it to anyone interested in reading more about deaths and the solving of murders in England during WWII. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the galley.