TRUE CRIME BOOKS

TRUE CRIME BOOKS

 

Infamous Murderers. Time Warner. 2004

 

 

Infamous murderers have always held a strange fascination, probably because they seem to be people who dare to do that most outrageous thing of all, wantonly kill a fellow human being. That puts them apart, because most of us could not and cannot do it; our better judgement prevails, or the calculating judgement that we would not get away with it.

 

For hundreds of years, infamous murderers were publicly executed, and the huge crowds who turned out to watch them hanged or beheaded are an indication of the degree of fascination they have always inspired.

 

Apologies for the lurid cover.

 

Review:

Publishers want to sell books and authors are therefore often hoist on a publishing house petard. Infamous Murderers has little to do with ‘Maniacs Filled with Hatred and Rage’ [the publisher’s choice of subtitle, not the author’s]: Crippen simply preferred the charms of Ethel La Neve to those of his nagging, slothful wife and James Hanratty probably felt more enmity towards the hangman than he did towards his supposed victims.  True enough, poor Ruth Ellis was bent on revenge when she shot her two timing lover David Blakely and the lovely Charlotte Corday – my boyhood heroine, but I was a strange boy – certainly hated the blood stained French Jacobin Jean-Paul Marat when she stabbed him in his bath, but all told I found the author’s compilation of murders and skulduggery more interesting in subject matter than the violence of the crimes. I found the book interesting and well researched and I can only wish that the publishers would let the authors describe the contents to their public. Infamous Murderers was sent to me as a review copy and it’s likely I wouldn’t have picked it from a rack given the lurid cover – which would have been a shame. Well recommended in any event. Danny Collins




 

Serial Killers. Time Warner. 2004

 

 

Serial murders are different from ordinary murders. A serial murderer has an in-built, long-term programme to kill, and very often the identity of the victim is of no consequence. A serial murderer goes on killing until stopped. A peculiarity is that there often a lull, a cooling-off period that may last for years before the killing resumes. Serial killing seems to thrive in urban societies. An estimated 85% of all the serial killers in the world are American. It may be that the atomized society of modern urban living creates the ideal conditions. There are huge numbers of isolated people and therefore potential victims; extreme mobility makes it easier for a killer to strike in widely separated locations, making it impossible for the authorities to see connections between the crimes.

 

Again, I feel the book is not helped by the publisher’s choice of cover.

 

 

 

The World’s Most Evil People. Time Warner. 2005

 

 

There are over 18 million websites on the internet relating to evil. Many of them are facetious or relate to games of various kinds. We are all afraid of evil, yet we make jokes about it and it is easy to see why. When we encounter evil, whether it is in a lurid newspaper piece reporting the trial of a serial killer or when we are betrayed by someone we thought we could trust, we are at a loss to understand.

 

Evil goes against the grain – for most of us – yet it is part of the warp and weft not only of history but of the everyday world that we live in. Evil acts are shocking, yet common. Laughing them off and making jokes about them is sometimes the only way we can cope with them. But the very fact that evil is commonplace makes it essential that we look at it hard and steadily, and try to understand it, not least so that we can defend ourselves as best we may. 

 

Reader’s comment:

The writing is fluent and the subject matter is presented in an easy-to-read, journalistic style. The lion’s share of the entries were very readable. After a while, certain characters began to reappear, their lives and deeds enmeshed with their contemporaries. After reading it, I felt I had received a balanced history lesson. There’s no voyeurism here; the subjects are put neatly into context with their era and their misdeeds presented intelligently. A very good read that attempts to put over an underlying message about evil in all its forms. Highly recommended.

 

 

Assassinations and Conspiracies. Futura. 2007

 

 

Throughout history the killing of a ruler has been used as a political expediency. Frequently it was a way of resolving a power struggle or way for a usurper to clear a path to the top. And many more conspiracies are about matters other than murder. There is the curious ancient conspiracy to airbrush an important female disciple from the biography of Jesus, apparently simply because she was a woman. There is the far more dangerous modern-day conspiracy to make us all believe that man-made carbon dioxide is causing global warming.

 

These conspiracies are fascinating not only because of the way in which the operate, but because of the mindset of the people who think it is somehow all right t be selective with the truth in order to make other people change their lives.. Conspiracies are very much part of the world as it has always been, and an integral part of the world today.

 

Readers’ comments:

‘Enjoyable. A great read.’  ‘Very good.’  ‘Couldn’t put it down.’

 

 

Great Unsolved Crimes. Futura. 2007

 

 

Of all crimes, the most worrying is the crime that is never solved. The criminal goes free, unpunished, often unidentified. Justice is not done. The friends and relatives of the victim – crimes always have victims – are left without closure. Whoever committed the crime is free to commit another.

 

Law enforcers worry about unsolved crimes for all of these reasons. Sometimes this leads to excessive haste in identifying suspects. The wrong people are suspected and convicted; so some crimes that at first appear to have been solved later turn out not to have been solved, and a double injustice is done. 

 

This book is an investigation into over 50 major unsolved crimes throughout history. It was quoted at the Annual Congress of the Union Internationale des Avocats in Dresden, in the Judiciary Working Group Session ‘Judges, tabloids and trial by media’ in November 2012. The chapter on the Wimbledon Common murder in particular was cited, in relation to the maltreatment of Colin Stagg (and the judge) by both the tabloid press and the police.

 

Reader’s comment:

‘Excellent reading. I liked the methods the writer used to form his deductions on each murder. As a former law enforcement officer, I could tell the author knew what he was talking about. Keep up the good work. I can’t wait to get my hands on another of your crime books.’

 

 

Author’s footnote:

I am very grateful to Amazon for providing me with a great ‘market stall’ and a profile as a writer that is not available to me in any bookshop, and it is great to have this opportunity to say so. Amazon do a very good job. Inevitably, given the scale of the business, there are sometimes mistakes. Amazon advertise two further books - Killers in Cold Blood and War Crimes & Atrocities – as being written by me. I’m afraid they are not. In fact I was approached by a publisher to write these and other true crime books, and I decided that, after five 576-page true crime books, I had written enough – I was finding it too disturbing and depressing to spend so much time inside the heads of psychopaths and other wrong-doers. One proposal put to me by the publisher was a book about cannibal killers. I turned it down without hesitation. I noticed that a book called Cannibal Killers subsequently appeared, and written by someone calling herself Chloe Castleden. She is no relation; the name is, I suppose, just an extraordinary coincidence. . .