Death of a Princess: The Investigation - Hardcover

Within hours of the death of Princess Diana, conspiracy theories began to fly thickly across the Internet. Within 10 days, a book called Who Killed Diana? was on the bookshelves in Cairo, claiming that the princess and her boyfriend Dodi Fayed were assassinated by the British government to ensure that neither Diana, her sons, nor any future children would convert to Islam. In our conspiracy-obsessed age, such a scenario seems as likely as any other currently making the rounds, be it the faked deaths of Elvis and Jim Morrison or aliens stockpiled in a government warehouse, but as authors Thomas Sancton (the Time magazine Paris bureau chief) and Scott MacLeod (the magazine's Middle East correspondent) point out in exhaustive detail, the fatal car accident was almost undoubtedly the result of poor judgment, coincidence, and plain bad luck.

The pair conducted interviews with such key figures as Dodi's father, Mohammed, and several of the paparazzi who were first on the scene, and they give a detailed account of the events leading up to the accident, as well as profiles of all the participants, most extensively the driver Henri Paul and the princess's Egyptian boyfriend. Unlike the popular image of a macho cocaine-snorting party guy, Dodi is revealed to have been a sweet and rather insecure figure whose enormous generosity was often taken advantage of. With much personal charisma but little aside from wealth and privilege to mark him as extraordinary, he seems to have been a natural match for his stellar consort. --John Longenbaugh

THE TRUTH BEHIND THE TRAGEDY

Few of us will ever forget the shocking news of August 31, 1997--Lady Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales, had died in a high-speed car crash at the young age of 36. Reports soon confirmed that she and her lover Dodi Fayed were the unlucky victims of a tragic accident. But what really happened on the Paris streets that fateful evening? TIME magazine reporters Thomas Sancton and Scott MacLeod, exhaustively researched the infamous story, and what they unearthed will shock and amaze you. The authors set out to answer these and many other questions:

-What could EMS workers could have done differently to save Diana? -What was Dodi and Diana's relationship at the time of the crash--were they getting engaged that night? Was Diana pregnant? -How was drunken "stand-in" chauffeur Henri Paul allowed to drive the Princess of Wales to her untimely death? -What did Dodi and Diana's do in their final hours together? -What is the startling assassination theory linking the British government to Diana's death?

The tranquility of her final resting place contrasted with the tempest of rumors, myths, and interrogations that swirled up in the wake of her death. Even before her body was laid in the ground, word began to spread that she had been pregnant at the time of her death. Under normal circumstances, that would have been a purely private matter--an additional cause for sadness if true, pointless and idle gossip if not. But the violent death of the Princess of Wales was not a normal event. And the question of whether or not she was pregnant is potentially one of the most explosive elements in the investigation, because a pregnancy would give greater credence to the assassination plot theories that began in the Middle East and soon proliferated around the globe.