Top Five Rating

BLOOD AND FIRE, the story of the 20th century’s most famous murder mystery, was acclaimed in the Wall Street Journal as one of the top five books in its genre. Former Harvard professor Edward Jay Epstein described it as a ‘superb reconstruction’ of a crime that rocked the world in the wartime summer of 1943.

Sir Harry Oakes was the British Empire’s richest man when he was killed in bizarre circumstances in his Bahamas mansion. His playboy son-in-law was tried for his murder and acquitted. The crime has remained unsolved for more than 70 years.

This book was described by Sir Christopher Ondaatje in The Canada Post as the ‘the most explicitly accusatory’ of the seven or so books about the case. It not only names those behind the murder, but also accuses the Duke of Windsor, then Governor of the Bahamas, of a shameful cover-up.