Those nice people at Netgalley are doing their level best to keep me supplied in a genre of book I am pleased to call “event microhistory”, wherein an obscure historical event is often shown to be more interesting and significant than commonly thought. This book is a entry in that genre.

In this case, the author attempts to show that the murder by John Reginald Christie of at least eight people is not just another sordid case of a perverted weirdo victimizing the less fortunate, although it is that too. It is significant, the author believes, because it is connected with the struggle to get government to admit that death-dealing air quality was the preventable and the result of human activity.

Some event microhistories I have read convinced me that focus event was indeed more significant than commonly supposed, like the one I read about the assassination of President James Garfield, which had a surprisingly positive influence on the development of both a non-partisan civil service in the US and important life-saving medical practices everywhere, which are directly relevant to my life and well-being today.

Other event microhistories have been guilty, in my sight, of rhetorical overreach in their determination to elevate the focus event to a more important place in history. An example is a book I recently read about the massive 1964 Alaska earthquake. The Alaska book, although fun to read, failed to convince me that the earthquake changed many people's minds about plate tectonics, as most minds seemed to be changed before the earthquake took place. Furthermore, plate tectonics, while interesting, are not as important to me as good government and effective medical practices.

In this case, I don't think that there is a link between the maniac Christie and the drive to clean London's air. Some of the murders occurred on days when London's man-made pollution was particularly bad, but others, as far as could tell, were not. Cleaner air would not necessary have brought Christie to justice any sooner or made his crimes any easier to detect. It just seems like the Christie murders are there because a book about a drive to de-toxify London's air (which clearly killed more people than Christie could ever dream of doing) would not have had the dramatic heft of a book about a deranged serial killer.

However, although I invite you to reject the connection between Christie and London's dirty air, I still enjoyed this book. It's about a fascinating place and time – England in 1950's. England had won the war, but in many ways they were worse off than the countries that lost – no Marshall Plan for you! A fixed determination to pay back the country's war debts led to privation on a scale difficult to imagine any other citizenry accepting. Yet accept it they did. If you'd like to know more, a good companion to this book might be David Kynaston's Tales of a New Jerusalem series. If you wish to read an alternate, one-page-long treatment of the Christie case, take a look in the second book in the series Family Britain, 1951-1957 , page 263.

I received an free unfinished galley of the ebook for review. Thank you to Netgalley and Hachette Books for their generosity.

Because of its geography, London has had a smoke/smog problem since the middle ages, when it hit a critical mass of population producing wood burning fires. In December of 1952, though, the use of cheap coal ("nutty slack"--the good coal was for export to pay down war debts) and a freak weather pattern blanketed the city in a deadly cloud of toxic mist. While the government of Winston Churchill and cabinet minister Harold MacMillan evaded dealing with the cascading public health crisis (the health minister gave a press conference on lung cancer while chain smoking), Labour MP Norman Dodds (one of Thatcher's first campaign opponents) tirelessly researched similar disasters in Belgium in 1931 and Pennsylvania in 1948 to demand action and accountability. At Rillington Place in Notting Hilll, Reg Christie, lifetime creep and petty criminal, realized that after developing a taste for luring home and then strangling prostitutes during his war work as as air raid warden, and used the cover of the fog to go on a murder spree. Dawson intertwines vivid accounts from parliamentary debates, overcrowded hospitals, desperate families, policemen on their walking beats and the Fleet Street press rooms.

I feel conflicted on how to rate this book. One one hand, both "murderers" were interesting to learn about - I remember learning about the fog in an episode of Call the Midwife, I believe, and having watched The Crown, learning about the monarchy of that time felt familiar. I had never heard of the actual murderer, so I was curious about him.

So on one hand, this book did a good job detailing the horrors of both types of murders. I learned a lot about the why of the fog, including the debates, perspectives of people who lived through it, and cover up of the actual final death tally. And I got some insight about John Reginald Christie and his actions, although there's only so much you can learn from a man like that.

On the other hand.. there was a lot of information that went over my head, mainly about the fog. And the way the writing went, it jumped back and forth between murderers. And I think I personally wanted to know more about the man and less about the science and politics of the fog. But that's just me.

So... if you want to learn about the history, science and politics of that fog... and a little about a murderer, this is the book for you. If you're more like me, this book may be a bit too much.