Handsome Brute explores the facts of a once-renowned now little-remembered British murder case the killings of the charming but deadly ex-RAF playboy Neville Heath. Since the 1940s Heath has generally been dismissed as a sadistic sex-killer
- the preserve of sensational Murder Anthologies
- & little else. But the story behind the tabloid headlines reveals itself to be complex & ambiguous provoking unsettling questions that echo across the decades to the present day. For the first time with access to previously restricted files from the Home Office & Metropolitan Police this book explores the complex motivations behind the murders through the prism of the immediate post-war period. Against the backdrop of a society in flux a culture at a moment of change how much is Heath's case symptomatic or indeed emblematic of the age he lived in? Handsome Brute is both an examination of the age of austerity & a real-life thriller as shocking & provocative as American Psycho or The Killer Inside Me exploring the perspectives of the women in Heath's life
- his wife his mother his lovers
- & his victims. This collage of experiences from the women who knew him intimately probes the schism at the heart of his fascinating chilling personality.