The award-winning writer turned the Jack the Ripper case on its head. Now she is giving Dr Crippen the same treatment – and questioning how we tell stories about murderous menIt was called “the crime of the century” and “the north London cellar murder”, and more than 100 years after it happened, the name of the murderer is still widely known. Dr Crippen has been the subject of multiple books, movies and TV shows and had a waxwork made of him at Madame Tussauds. But the story of his crimes, writes Hallie Rubenhold in Story of a Murder, remains one “predominantly about women but told almost exclusively by men”. As such, Crippen’s victim is long forgotten. Her name was Belle Elmore, and in Rubenhold’s book she is brought back to life.Rubenhold and I are in a cafe in Muswell Hill, north London, a 10 minute walk from where Elmore is buried, and where the 53-year-old author lives with her barrister husband, Frank. Writing Story of a Murder was nerve-racking, says Rubenhold, partly because...