You couldn't make it up: incredible real-life criminal cases. This work is a fascinating A-Z of murderous crimes which spans the globe and the centuries in uncovering the extremes of human criminality in all its strangeness. This collection of unusual, if not sensational, murder cases recalls strange crimes of the past and offers insights into particularly macabre and shocking modern murders. Many of the cases also shed light on advances in crime detection, law enforcement and forensic science. Cases include: Krystian Bala, the Polish writer who killed a rival, and then used the murder as the plot for a novel; Alexander Pichuskin, who was stopped one short of killing the 64 victims he needed to 'fill a chess board'; John Lee, 'the man they could not hang' who survived three attempts to execute him; and, Adelaide Bartlett, who was accused of killing her husband with chloroform, but was acquitted because no one could work out how she had done it - and she wouldn't say.
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Product Description
About the Author
Robin Odell and Wilfred Gregg, between them, have authored or co-authored some twenty books on true crime, ranging from detailed accounts of famous crimes to reference books on murder and forensic science. Their most recent work, Murderers' Row, was preceded by The Murderers' Who's Who and Encyclopedia of Mass Murder.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Kindle Edition
This book gives very brief information about a multiplicity of murders, and whilst interesting, it tries to do too much in too short a space of time allowing a page or at most two or three for each crime. If you are looking for bare outlines this is the book for you, but I would prefer slightly more information and less cases.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3.2 out of 5 stars
11 reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Weird but enjoyable
2 Aug 2011
By M. Lucus
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Kindle Edition
This book had a lot of little-known bizarre crimes. If you're a true crime buff it's well worth a read.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting, but not "bizarre"
12 Jan 2012
By Bastian Laufeyson
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
Most of the crimes reported in this book aren't what I'd call bizarre. Armin Meiwes is here, as is Rattlesnake James and poor Lizzie Lowell. As the book continues, though, one can't help noticing that Odell covers only murders, and most of these are domestic assaults, 19th century poisoners (did everyone use arsenic back then?), and psychosexual serial killers. If you're looking for a book that covers parachuting bank robbers, convicted murderers whose victim isn't dead, and muggers whose weapon of choice is a stale baguette, you won't be satisfied here. However, Odell does choose cases which are obscure enough to be new--particularly to American audiences--and casual crime buffs will find enough here to whet their appetite. The only other criticism I have is that these two-page summaries aren't long enough to do much more than get you interested. Intrigued readers like myself will find that Odell's book is most worthwhile as a starting point for more in-depth research. Still and all, well worth the seven dollars spent on this Kindle edition.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Audiobook is 3 1/2 Stars Please See Review for Caveats
6 May 2013
By Sires
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Kindle Edition
Format: Audible Download
The reader was fairly good and I learned something that I've often wondered about-- are terms used in books from the US "translated" for the UK market. The answer, at least for this one, is yes.
This is a compendium of true crimes. Many of them do have bits of the bizarre about them. Others are fairly banal. Some are well known, others I had never heard of before and I thought I was fairly well versed in at least historic crime. It made for undemanding listening while I was cutting out some winter killed vines from the front flower beds and doing some other chores. The accounts seem to mainly have been retold from secondary sources. The one that really bore that out was the retelling of the events in Vince Bugliosi's Till Death Us Do Part: A True Murder Mystery. Bugliosi for whatever reason used fake names for both the victims and perpetrators in his book. The real names are now readily available on the internet and the facts are a matter of public record so repeating this doesn't
Now for my favorite bit on the perils of translation from English on our side to UK English. The Thomas Capano/Fahey trial was a bit of an internet sensation in part due to the fact that Capano was a well connected lawyer and political figure in Delaware. He killed Fahey in his own apartment and then with his brother's assistance transported her body in a large plastic cooler to his brother's boat and tossed the cooler overboard. What happened then definitely put it in the category of bizarre as the cooler, despite their best efforts, just wouldn't sink.
However, it becomes even more surreal when the cooler is called a refrigerator. The mental image of two men hauling a refrigerator out of a car and onto a boat, throwing it overboard then shooting at it because it won't sink and having to haul it back aboard made me wonder a bit about the facts as laid out in some of the other accounts.
At over 19 hours though this is a solid listen.
The reader was fairly good and I learned something that I've often wondered about-- are terms used in books from the US "translated" for the UK market. The answer, at least for this one, is yes.
This is a compendium of true crimes. Many of them do have bits of the bizarre about them. Others are fairly banal. Some are well known, others I had never heard of before and I thought I was fairly well versed in at least historic crime. It made for undemanding listening while I was cutting out some winter killed vines from the front flower beds and doing some other chores. The accounts seem to mainly have been retold from secondary sources. The one that really bore that out was the retelling of the events in Vince Bugliosi's Till Death Us Do Part: A True Murder Mystery. Bugliosi for whatever reason used fake names for both the victims and perpetrators in his book. The real names are now readily available on the internet and the facts are a matter of public record so repeating this doesn't
Now for my favorite bit on the perils of translation from English on our side to UK English. The Thomas Capano/Fahey trial was a bit of an internet sensation in part due to the fact that Capano was a well connected lawyer and political figure in Delaware. He killed Fahey in his own apartment and then with his brother's assistance transported her body in a large plastic cooler to his brother's boat and tossed the cooler overboard. What happened then definitely put it in the category of bizarre as the cooler, despite their best efforts, just wouldn't sink.
However, it becomes even more surreal when the cooler is called a refrigerator. The mental image of two men hauling a refrigerator out of a car and onto a boat, throwing it overboard then shooting at it because it won't sink and having to haul it back aboard made me wonder a bit about the facts as laid out in some of the other accounts.
At over 19 hours though this is a solid listen.
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3.2 out of 5 stars
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