Just before 3am on January 24th, 1941, when Britain was preoccupied with surviving the Blitz, the body of Josslyn Hay, Earl of Erroll, was discovered lying on the floor of his Buick, at a road intersection some miles outside Nairobi, with a bullet in his head. A leading figure in Kenya's colonial community, he had recently been appointed Military Secretary, but he was primarily a seducer of other men's wives. Sir Henry Delves Broughton, whose wife was Erroll's current conquest, had an obvious motive for the murder, but no one was ever convicted and the question of who killed him became a classic mystery, a scandal and cause celebre. Among those who became fascinated with the Erroll case was Cyril Connolly. He joined up with James Fox for a major investigation of the case in 1969 for the SUNDAY TIMES magazine. After Connolly's death James Fox inherited the obsession and a commitment to continue in pursuit of the story both in England and Kenya in the late 1970s. One day, on a veranda overlooking the Indian Ocean, Fox came across a piece of evidence that seemed to bring all the fragments and pieces together and convinced him that he saw a complete picture.

I read this decades ago and have my own copy somewhere on my shelves. At the time I remember finding it a fascinating story, typical proof that reality beats fiction at every turn. There was also a great movie made of it with Greta Scacchi and Charles Dance (and what a great casting that was!). I must say I had kind of forgotten about it when I stumbled on this copy in my local little library. It was screaming to be taken and sent to new readers. So at this stage it is off to a fellow bookcrosser for her reading challenge.

Thank you for this book to read for the 666 reading challenge. You have made it sound extremely interesting!

Half way through this non fiction book and police assisting Harwich sums up the Happy Valley residents and their decadent lifestyle beautifully -
He found them ‘totally selfish, self-centred exhibitionists’, for whom the trial had been little more than a platform for their histrionics. He recalled that for most of them the problem of establishing alibis was that they had been too drunk to remember where they had been or with whom they had been sleeping on the night of the murder!

Finished this book today. A bit of a slog as I thought it meandered a bit in the telling and was complicated by so many characters but I did find it to be an astounding true story and the movie could be worth a watch.
A cast of wealthy, titled Brit’s who made their own rules and enjoyed a decadent and privileged lifestyle in 30’s Kenya. Interesting with all the speculation on who was the murderer and in the end, the journalists seemed to settle on the acquitted Broughton being guilty.

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