The Wrong Man

Inspector Ted Stratton returns in a mystery based on real events—from the award-winning author of An Empty Death. "An exceptional talent." —Laura Lippman

It's 1950s London. Beautiful Diana Calthrop, last seen breaking hearts in Laura Wilson's The Innocent Spy as an icily daring MI5 operative in the finest couture, is looking a little tarnished, her famously catastrophic taste in men catching up at last. On the plus side, she has once again bumped into Inspector Ted Stratton, that sturdy, straightforward copper. Could he be her rescuer? First he'd have to rescue himself, and that's a long shot: With his wife dead and his children distant, Stratton's nursing his own depression like an old war wound. And while London never lacks for crime, there's one crime in particular—one ghastly series of them—that Stratton just can't shake.

The Wrong Man is rooted in a real-life case, which has been dramatized several times, most successfully in the chilling 1971 film 10 Rillington Place, starring Richard Attenborough and John Hurt.


The book was originally published in the UK as A Capital Crime.

Praise for the Inspector Stratton series

"Historical crime fiction at its best." —The Guardian

"Wilson is as adroit at the straightforward mechanics of the crime mystery as she is at evocative prose shot through with a keen sense of the past." —Independent

"Outstanding . . . Wilson convincingly evokes what it was like to sleep in a bomb shelter or stumble through shattered London streets in the dark. The characters are convincing, too." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)