Death of an Actress – Antony M Brown
Published in time for the 70th anniversary of one of the most dramatic trials in British criminal history.
DEATH OF AN ACTRESS is the second in the Cold Case Jury Collection, a unique series of true crime titles. Each case study tells the story of an unsolved crime, or one in which the verdict is open to doubt. Fresh evidence is presented and the reader is invited to deliver their own verdict.
October 1947. A luxury liner steams over the equator off the coast of West Africa and a beautiful actress disappears from her cabin. Suspicion falls on a dashing deck steward with a reputation for entering the cabins of female passengers. When the liner docks at Southampton, the steward is questioned by police. Protesting his innocence, he makes an astonishing admission that shocks everyone, and is charged with murder. His trial at the historic Great Hall in Winchester draws the world’s media. He is found guilty and sentenced to hang.
But was the verdict sound?
Many believe not.
Now for the first time, Antony M. Brown has secured unprecedented access to the police file, enabling the definitive story to be told. Included in the file are original court exhibits, including a hairbrush with strands of the actress’s red hair. Could a personal effect left behind in her cabin provide clues to how she might have died? Take your seat on the Cold Case Jury…
My thanks to Mel at Mirror Books for my review copy and the opportunity to join the blog tour.
A rare dip into True Crime today at Grab This Book. I generally don’t read True Crime stories as I am terrible at keeping track of characters and non-fiction tends to have a larger list of people, places, names and other important details which it is very important to keep track of. Also I like knowing that the horrible things I usually read about are all just made up, when it becomes REAL I get uncomfortable. The psychologists can have some fun with that last confession!
So how did I get on with Death of an Actress? I will be honest and confess that I rather enjoyed it. Quite a lot as it turns out.
This is the second book in Antony M Brown’s Cold Case Jury collection. A real life crime is presented to the reader. Through disclosure of facts, compilation of official documents presented in the real life court cases and some dramatic recreations of events penned by the author the reader gets the case compiled for their consideration.
The twist which I loved was that once you have read the book you visit the Cold Case website and cast your own vote as to how you felt the accused should have been charged. I cast my own verdict on Death of an Actress just before I started writing this review. Unsurprisingly I did not side with the most popular verdict.
Death of an Actress recounts the murder of Gay Gibson, a young rising star of the stage who was traveling from South Africa back to Southampton on luxury liner Durban Castle. One night Miss Gibson vanished from her cabin and her body was never found. A crew member, James Camb, was suspected of her murder – he had a reputation for pressing his advances upon single female passengers and had taken a shine to young Gay.
Antony M Brown will introduce readers to Gay Gibson and guide us through her young life and explore her character. He considers Camb and his reputation and status among the crew of the Durban Castle. He then uses dramatic recreations to explore the last days of Gay Gibson’s life. Using witness statements, news paper reports and other primary source material we get a great insight of life on board the Durban Castle for those important days after the ship left South Africa.
The fun in reading Death of an Actress is absorbing the information provided, forming your own assessment of the behaviours of Camb and Gibson and then working out if the arrest, and trial, of James Camb for Miss Gibson’s murder was correct or if some important facts were not given proper consideration.
I must admit I was caught up in the details of the case. I knew I was going to cast my own verdict on events when I finished the book so I was paying close attention (most unlike me). I was shocked by some of the omissions from the court case and I got sidetracked from fact by some “additional” detail which was included after the main case had been discussed, unverified recollections of stories overheard but which had potential to change the nature of the trial.
All very interesting and very well constructed by the author. Some readers may quibble that a dramatic recreation of conversations which the author could not have possibly have overhead have no place in a true crime book. Personally I really enjoyed the switch from hard facts to the authors own interpretation of possible scenarios – it opened up my own imagination to what may have occurred.
A very welcome change to my normal choice of book. I may even read another True Crime book soon…particularly as I cannot help but notice this was the second case for the Cold Case Jury. The first book has the intriguing title The Green Bicycle Mystery.
Highly recommended!
Death of an Actress is published by Mirror Books and can be ordered in digital or paperback format here:
http://www.mirrorcollection.co.uk/products/details/search_results/DeathofanActress/