The Mouthless Dead

A powerful and gripping crime novel based on the Wallace Murder, a national cause célèbre of the 1930s and still unsolved today, by the author of Curtain Call and Our Friends in Berlin

One night in 1931 William Wallace was handed a phone message at his chess club from a Mr Qualtrough, asking him to meet at an address to discuss some work. Wallace caught a tram from the home he shared with his wife, Julia, to the address which turned out, after Wallace had consulted passers-by and even a policeman, to not exist.

On returning home two hours later he found his wife beaten to death in the parlour. The elaborate nature of his alibi pointed to Wallace as the culprit. He was arrested and tried, found guilty of murder and sentenced to hang, but the next month the Court of Criminal Appeal sensationally overturned the verdict and he walked free. The killer was never found.

Fifteen years on, the inspector who worked the case is considering it once more. Speculation continues to be rife over the true killer's identity. James Agate in his diary called it 'the perfect murder', Raymond Chandler said 'The case is unbeatable. It will always be unbeatable'. And on a cruise in 1947, new information is about to come to light.

A dark, unsettling, completely addictive mystery, which draws you in with all the momentum and all the loving attention to period detail that we've come to expect from Anthony Quinn Jonathan Coe
This absorbing account of one of the most famous unsolved British murder cases creates a fascinating narrative about what really happened. The Mouthless Dead is as engrossing as it is unsettling Emma Flint, author of Little Deaths

Anthony Quinn was born in Liverpool in 1964. From 1998 to 2013 he was the film critic for the Independent. His novels include The Rescue Man, which won the 2009 Authors' Club Best First Novel Award; Half of the Human Race; The Streets, which was shortlisted for the 2013 Walter Scott Prize; Curtain Call, now released as The Critic , a feature film starring Ian McKellen and Gemma Arterton; Freya, Eureka, Our Friends in Berlin, London, Burning and Molly & the Captain. He also wrote the recent Liverpool memoir Klopp.

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