Book description
Bessie Mundy, Alice Burnham and Margaret Lofty are three women with one
thing in common. They are spinsters and are desperate to marry. Each
woman meets a smooth-talking stranger who promises her a better life.
She falls under his spell, and becomes his wife. But marriage soon turns
into a terrifying experience. In the dark opening months of the First
World War, Britain became engrossed by 'The Brides in the Bath' trial.
The horror of the killing fields of the Western Front was the backdrop
to a murder story whose elements were of a different sort. This was evil
of an everyday, insidious kind, played out in lodging houses in seaside
towns, in the confines of married life, and brought to a horrendous
climax in that most intimate of settings -- the bathroom. The nation
turned to a young forensic pathologist, Bernard Spilsbury, to explain
how it was that young women were suddenly expiring in their baths. This
was the age of science. In fiction, Sherlock Holmes applied a scientific
mind to solving crimes. In real-life, would Spilsbury be as infallible
as the 'great detective'?
