Before dawn on 31 October 1946, less than a year after the slaughter of World War Two, on a bleak roadside in Kent, a lone woman looks to hitch a lift to London. A lorry driver stops. The encounter ends in murder.
The victim, Dagmar Petrzywalski, is a gentle eccentric spinster. She had sought the peace of the countryside after her London home was bombed. She is the embodiment of Austerity Britain’s self-sacrifice and thrift. Her murderer, Harold Hagger is its opposite. His life is a litany of petty crimes, deceived wives, sloughed-off identities and army desertions. With their characters so indelibly marked the tragic outcome of their meeting seems determined by fate.
In Murder at Wrotham Hill Diana Souhami dwells on the significance of this crime, and shows that even after the killing of twenty million people in a global conflict, one death still has much to tell us. In doing so she paints a gripping portrait of post-war Britain that raises questions about murder, punishment and destiny.
Her characters include England’s first celebrity policeman, Fabian of the Yard; the celebrated forensic scientist, Keith Simpson; and history’s most famous and dedicated hangman, Albert Pierrepoint.
