Título: Death in the Air
Autor: Kate Winkler Dawson
Sinopse: A real-life thriller in the vein of The Devil in the White City, Kate Winkler Dawson's debut Death in the Air is a gripping, historical narrative of a serial killer, an environmental disaster, and an iconic city struggling to regain its footing.
London was still recovering from the devastation of World War II when another disaster hit: for five long days in December 1952, a killer smog held the city firmly in its grip and refused to let go. Day became night, mass transit ground to a halt, criminals roamed the streets, and some 12,000 people died from the poisonous air. But in the chaotic aftermath, another killer was stalking the streets, using the fog as a cloak for his crimes.
All across London, women were going missing--poor women, forgotten women. Their disappearances caused little alarm, but each of them had one thing in common: they had the misfortune of meeting a quiet, unassuming man, John Reginald Christie, who invited them back to his decrepit Notting Hill flat during that dark winter. They never left.
The eventual arrest of the "Beast of Rillington Place" caused a media frenzy: were there more bodies buried in the walls, under the floorboards, in the back garden of this house of horrors? Was it the fog that had caused Christie to suddenly snap? And what role had he played in the notorious double murder that had happened in that same apartment building not three years before--a murder for which another, possibly innocent, man was sent to the gallows?
The Great Smog of 1952 remains the deadliest air pollution disaster in world history, and John Reginald Christie is still one of the most unfathomable serial killers of modern times. Journalist Kate Winkler Dawson braids these strands together into a taut, compulsively readable true crime thriller about a man who changed the fate of the death penalty in the UK, and an environmental catastrophe with implications that still echo today.
Contexto da obra
Como livro em inglês, esta obra costuma ganhar também uma camada própria de interesse editorial e linguístico. “Death in the Air”, de Kate Winkler Dawson, publicado pela editora Hachette Books, em 2018 e com 368 páginas, integra a categoria Livros em Inglês. Por isso, o interesse da obra tende a se ampliar quando o leitor considera também a relação com a língua em que ela circula.
Editora: Hachette Books
Páginas: 368
Ano: 2018-11-13
Edição: Reprint
Linguagem: en
ISBN: 0316506834
ISBN13: 9780316506830
Sobre a editora
Os livros da editora Hachette Books costumam oferecer experiências de leitura marcadas por narrativas intensas e pessoais, que transitam entre memórias de músicos e figuras públicas, relatos de superação, e investigações detalhadas de histórias reais. O catálogo privilegia obras que exploram trajetórias de vida com tons que vão do íntimo ao social, como memórias de artistas do rock e do metal, histórias de justiça criminal, e relatos de batalhas pessoais e coletivas. A linguagem tende a ser direta, com ritmo que ora se concentra em relatos vívidos e emocionais, ora em análises profundas e contextualizadas, sem perder a fluidez. Há uma clara preferência por temas ligados à música, biografias, justiça, e histórias de transformação pessoal e social.
