Dear Mr Brady, Dear Mr Bianchi,

By Christine Joanna Hart

She baked the cupcakes at six in the morning. By midnight she was writing to a serial killer.

St Margaret's is the prettiest village in London. White houses like iced cakes, wisteria on every wall, and mothers at the school gate who decided on the first afternoon exactly what they thought of you.

Christine is a single mother with a little boy, a broken-down Volkswagen and a house that smells of damp and other people's departures. She was once a Fleet Street investigator in navy Chanel. Now she counts the notes in her purse at the petrol station and practises her smile in the mirror before the school run.

She makes cupcakes with pale blue icing and silver balls so the other mothers might let her into their circle, just for once. They don't.

So, at the kitchen table after her son has gone to bed, she starts writing to Kenneth Bianchi, the Hillside Strangler. His letters come back warm and attentive and full of interest in her. Soon she's looking forward to them more than almost anything else in her life.

This isn't a true crime book. It's about the loneliness inside a perfect English village. It's about the cruelty that wears good manners like a coat, and a childhood that taught a woman to mistake contempt for love. And it's about how a tired, clever, overdressed mother at a school gate ends up on a plane to Walla Walla to sit across a table from a killer.

It's also the story of how she climbed back out.

A True Life Memoir.

Chris Berry Dee - A Truly Unique Crime Writer of Our Time. Hart not only Talks the talks she Walks the walk. Her research is a must read by anyone interested in serial murder.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0HDT36QLV
• ISBN13: 9798192005057
• Release Date: August 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 608 Pages
• Weight: 1.77 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.0" x 9.0"