Obsessive and impressive.
The Times Crime Club
A masterpiece.
Jon Savage, author of England's Dreaming and 1966: The Year The Decade Exploded
Part-obsessive cold-case detective story, part-occult history of London in the 1950s—a time and a place it turns out we never knew—Dead Fashion Girl is a genuinely original work which both reinvents and revitalises true-crime writing. In a word, brilliant.
David Peace, author of the Red Riding Quartet
As pop culture thinkers go, Fred Vermorel is right up there, among a very select company of the greats… Dead Fashion Girl digs through the crust of cliche with an astonishing depth of archival research that cakes the pages with news clippings, magazine photo spreads, advertisements, official records, theatre programmes, and photographer's contact sheets. The texture of the era is vividly evoked.
Simon Reynolds, author of Rip It Up and Start Again and Retromania
An inspiring, intriguing, and brilliant book.
Cathi Unsworth, Author of Bad Penny Blues and Weirdo
A great read, a great investigation and fascinating recreation of an interesting period. And he may have just solved the mystery of the Jack the Stripper murders.
Stephen Dorril, Author of MI6 and Blackshirt
A riveting true-crime tale that unfolds in layers, a palimpsest of high and low London lives… this beautifully designed volume is both a page-turning thriller and an unforgettable sociological snapshot of louche London in the 1950s.
Victoria Nelson, author of Neighbour George and The Secret Life of Puppets
A sulphurous perfume of debauchery rises from these pages. Libidinous parties, frauds, compliant models, pseudo-actresses, marriages of convenience, we swim in a poisonous aquarium. In this Modiano universe, cockney version, everything is cloudy, everything is blurry. Eyes are averted.
Vermorel examines the files, illuminates the grey areas. He is interested in high fashion and the mentality and mores of that period, he retraces the career of disgraced minister, Jack Profumo, cites a former mistress of James Bond actor, Roger Moore. Was Jean Townsend in the wrong place at the wrong time? Did she know things that would have bothered a corrupt elite?
Here she is, taking the last train home, crossing a desolate field in the middle of the night. She is a woman of the 1950s, designated prey. She remains a mystery. Vermorel offers her a memorial in print. His book is mesmerising. It evokes those classic British black and white films with Dirk Bogarde. But who could play Jean Townsend?
Eric Neuhoff
Le Figaro
