Valley of Silence: The Mystery of the Drummond Murders

London: Robert Hale. Very Good/Good. 1955. First Edition. Hard Cover. 8vo Dust jacket now in a clear protective sleeve, unclipped, chunks missing to edges. Original cloth boards with bright titling on spine. Darkened ffep. A very few foxing spots on page tips. No ownership inscriptions. 9 illustrations. 192 pages clean and tight. ON AUGUST 5m, 1952, THREE British tourists camping by a farm in Lurs, in the valley of the River Durance, Upper Provence, were brutally murdered by an unknown assailant. They were Sir Jack Drummond, distinguished British nutrition expert, his wife and their ten-year-old daughter, Elizabeth. After a police inquiry lasting over two years, a 77 year old French farmer, Gaston Dominici, was put on trial and found guilty of the murders. But the evidence on which he was sentenced was so flimsy that the verdict resulted in an outcry in France and a re-opening of the investigation. As Special Correspondent for the Daily Mail, Gordon Young, Chief Paris Correspondent of that newspaper, covered the tradegy of Lurs on the spot from the day following the murder and also attended the trial of Gaston Dominici. In this book he sets out factually and objectively all that is known of the affair. He explains the sinister past history of the Durance Valley which caused the police investigators to find themselves up against a "wall of silence" while making their inquiries, reveals that the affair had a strange political background and paints a picture of the "Dominici Clan" who all found themselves involved, in varying degrees, in a web of lies and intrigue. .