July 1910. A gruesome discovery has been made at 39 Hilldrop Crescent, London: the dismembered remains of music hall singer Bella Elmore, wife of Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen, have been found in the basement. However, Dr. Crippen himself and his mistress Ethel Le-Neve disappeared in an unknown direction. On the other side of the English Channel, in Antwerp, Captain Kendall gives the order to the crew of the Montrose steamer to begin a two-week voyage to Canada. There are about 1,300 passengers on board, including the imperious Antoinette Drake and her daughter, the unassuming Martha Hayes and the mysterious Mathieu Zaille with his nephew Tom Dumarquet. And also the inconspicuous Mr. John Robinson and his seventeen-year-old son Edmund... “Crippen” is a novel by one of the best Irish writers of the new generation, John Boyne, recreating the details of the amazing escape attempt of the most famous murderer in the history of the 20th century. And now, more than a century later, not all the mysteries in the “Crippen case” have been solved.