Last night I did a talk with Tom Wood, former Deputy Chief Constable of Lothian and Borders on crime in 1935.
Tom is the author of Ruxton: The First Modern Murder and that case came to trial the same week as the trial of John McGuigan for the Cuddies Strip crimes, which were the basis for my novel Cuddies Strip.
Some of the police officers involved in the Ruxton case also offered assistance to the Perthshire force and the two crimes were heavily reported side-by-side in the newspapers.
The criminal investigations are fascinating: in the Ruxton case, as Tom expertly explains, we saw the beginnings of a scientific, professional approach to policing. The Cuddies Strip investigation, by contrast, was undertaken by a police force that was under-resourced and not set up to manage a complex and detailed investigation.
You can view the talk here.
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