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    The Trial of Elizabeth Cree
    The Trial of Elizabeth Cree
    The Trial of Elizabeth Cree
    Audiobook9 hours

    The Trial of Elizabeth Cree

    Written by Peter Ackroyd

    Narrated by Paul Hecht, Simon Prebble and Jenny Sterlin

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    If your tastes run to Victorian mysteries and murder, you'll enjoy Peter Ackroyd's special blending of fact and fiction in this magnificent recreation of the bizarre murders that rocked Victorian England. Drawing on surviving police records and court transcripts, Ackroyd paints a fascinating portrait of a savage murderer, the terror that rippled across London, and the innocent woman charged with the crimes.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateNov 4, 2011
    ISBN9781456125103
    The Trial of Elizabeth Cree
    Author

    Peter Ackroyd

    Peter Ackroyd is an award-winning novelist, as well as a broadcaster, biographer, poet and historian. He is the author of the acclaimed non-fiction bestsellers, Thames: Sacred River and London: The Biography, as well as the History of England series. He holds a CBE for services to literature and lives in London.

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    Reviews for The Trial of Elizabeth Cree

    4/5

    16 ratings8 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Excellent story,really loved this one! I enjoyed reading this book from the the very first page! It tells the story of Elizabeth Cree or Lambeth Marsh Lizzie as she was known previously, a murder mystery set in pea soup foggy Victorian London in the 1880s.The story is told in parts by Lizzie herself or her husband John Cree.Elizabeth comes from a poor background in South East London,she lives with her mother ( who behaves like some one not quite right in the head) in a hovel where they sew sailing cloths for fishermen. The mother is very ill and slowly getting worse,Lizzie gets her a doctor but nothing can be done for her so Lizzie just walks off and leaves her to die in the hovel on her own. While her mother is slowly dying she goes off to the theatre to see Dan Leno on stage where she is offered a job working in the theatre, later Lizzie returns to her mother and finding her now dead she arranges for her burial in a pauper's grave and then goes off to work in the theatre with Dan Leno. Lizzie is a cold hearted *** (obviously inherited from her mother) the story goes on to tell you about the things that Lizzie gets up to (nasty,dark things)which leads to her husband's and her own eventual demise.George Gissing and Karl Marx also appear in the story as they were frequent visitors to The British Museum at the same time as John Cree.I was also a frequent visitor when young (what does that mean?)I think you will enjoy reading this book.
    • 3/5
      "Here we are again".OK so "Dan Leno etc" is the second work by Ackroyd I've read this year but this phrase is pertinent to this novel as anyone else who reads it will discover. And a fun bit of camp, gothic and gaslight hokum it is too, with which to while away a few hours.Set amongst the music halls or low variety theatres of the East End of London between the mid-1860s and 1880, Ackroyd not only invents a splendid fictitious series of murders which echo a series of shockers of the early 19th century but also introduces legendary comedian Dan Leno as major player and rounds up Karl Marx and Oscar Wilde as walk on parts (and Charles Babbage and his "Analytical Engine" as defunct and very stationary bit players respectively) to boot.Although relatively short at around 280pp, the novel weaves together a variety of voices - the reminiscences of the former variety girl turned respectable middle class wife; her husband, a former journalist and would-be dramatist who has come into money; the former university student who has married an alcoholic whore in an attempt to "redeem" her; the gay detective and his engineer boyfriend; and of course the voice of Ackroyd himself providing a documentary voice and commentary upon his fictitious non-fictitous fictitious 'orrible murders - all ably supported by a cast of thousands including assorted persons of the stage, East End whores, down and outs, cab drivers, a pornographic photographer with a taste for being spanked, surly waiters and audiences satisfied or otherwise.Hokum from beginning to end but a novel to lose oneself in on a winter's evening.
    • 5/5
      I wish all Ackroyd's books were like this. A masterwork in how to write a thriller, a twist, a horror story, a historical novel, a social critique, a sociological study, a study of madness. Gore, wit, beauty.
    • 5/5
      This is a cracking good read. It is one of those books where one constantly thinks that one is ahead of the plot and is constantly proved to be wrong!This is Charles Dickens meets Jack the Ripper country. As one would expect from Peter Ackroyd, it is very well written and effortlessly purveys the feel of the age. I will not say more about the plot so that, were someone foolish enough to read this tripe, it will not be spoilt: suffice it to say, that having told the reader what is going on, Ackroyd still manages to throw one more feint into the mix.
    • 4/5
      I have to say that this is one of the finer Victorian mysteries I've read and it kept me on the edge of the chair until the end. Once in a while I would get this idea that something is dreadfully wrong here, but couldn't quite put my finger on it. However, the true beauty of this novel is the atmosphere -- London during the Victorian period -- the darkness tends to overwhelm you while you read it. It is quite good (I love Ackroyd's works) and one in which the true mystery aficionado will not be disappointed.Set in 1880s London, the story begins with the hanging of a woman, Elizabeth Cree, who has been found guilty of the murder of her husband, but only a few pages are devoted to this act; the story begins in earnest with a murderer whose works are detailed within the pages of a diary. As the murderer does not confine himself to one killing, and as the killings all seem to take place in a part of London known as Limehouse, the panic spreads and the murderer gains a name from the press: "The Limehouse Golem." But Victorian London itself, or at least its somewhat darker denizens, is as much the topic of this book as is this series of murders. Author and essayist George Gissing and Karl Marx both turn up as themselves here, analyzing the suffering of those on the streets and the society which causes this to happen. Ackroyd's description of London is so incredible that you'll start imagining the darkness of the fogs, the smells, the poor and all of their sufferings, the theaters that Karl Marx proclaims are the true opiate of the masses. Simply wonderful all around.
    • 4/5
      A grim story of a series of Jack the Ripper style murders in 1880, with a twist at the end. Mostly fairly gripping, though some of the chapters about stage life dragged a bit for me. The author's love and knowledge of London come through here as elsewhere.
    • 1/5
      DNF - It took me about 60 pages to decide that I did not want to read this. Probably a case of one man's feast is another man's poison. I had seen it listed in somebody's recommended reads, which is why I tried to read it. I couldn't decide whether I was reading tarted up fact or fiction, and that annoyed me to start with. There were supposed "extracts" taken from diaries, "extracts" from the trial of Elizabeth Cree, parts that were plain narration, and then sections where the reader is supposed to decide who the narrator is. I drew the line when the murderer was sitting next to Karl Marx in the British library, and then followed him home intending to kill him. I dislike writers riding piggy back on well-known historical characters. Also off-putting were the descriptions of prostitutes in London in 1890s being disembowelled or similar.
    • 5/5
      I took this book with me to London to read there while staying with my brother for the weekend, since Peter Ackroyd's books are evocative of the history, mystery and atmosphere of the capital.I know how absurdly gullible newspaper reporters can be; no doubt they now believed in the Limehouse Golem with the same fervour as everybody else, and willingly accepted that some supernatural creature was preying upon the living. Mythology of a kind has returned to London - if indeed it ever really left it. Interrogate an inhabitant of London very carefully, and you will find the remnants of some frightened medieval churl. A sinister and atmospheric tale of musical halls and murder in the foggy London night. Elizabeth Cree is on trial for poisoning her husband. The respectable housewife married to a well-off journalist and playwright started life in squalor as sail mender Lambeth Marsh Lizzie, before becoming a music hall artist working with Dan Leno under the names 'Little Victor's Daughter' and 'The Older Brother'.Dan Leno, George Gissing and even Karl Marx are suspects in the dreadful murders happening in Limehouse, just eight years before Jack the Ripper's reign in Whitechapel.Londoners love a good killing, on stage or off, and two of the wittier gentlemen were comparing the Limehouse Golem with Bluebeard himself. I was longing to approach them and introduce myself. 'I am the Golem. Here is my hand. You may shake it.'