SLEUTHS, SLAYERS. AND SWINDLERS A Casebook of Crime

Hardback. Containing ventures into the darkly fascinating world of criminals and their crimes, dealing with crimes committed outside the United States. The author has brought together a blood-curdling gallery of rogues and racketeers. Selecting his cases from the police files of 3 continents, he recreates in every grisly detail 14 of the most infamous crimes that shocked the public, excited the press, and baffled detectives over a period of 70yrs. The cases run the gamut of motives, methods, and murderers. There are crimes of passion, crimes for money, and crimes committed for the sheer fun of it. Jack the Ripper, whose foul murders terrorised London in the 1880s; Henri Desire Landru, whose specialty was the extermination of rich widows; the arch-sadist Marcel Petiot, who maintained a private slaughterhouse during World War II; George Jones Smith, whose multiple marriages invariably led to the sudden demise of his brides - these are only a few of the fiends who once again stalk their victims in these pages. Although most of these crimes have become classics of criminal detection, for their solutions have been as spectacular as the dark deeds themselves, not all were solved, nor were all the criminals brought to justice. Among those who apparently "made their crimes pay" were Bela Kiss, who dropped mysteriously out of sight, but not before he had disposed of 24 people, and Henri Lemoine, who embezzled a half million dollars in a dazzling confidence game and disappeared with his wife - and a fortune - before the police could close in. 224pp. 8vo. h/back. From the library of true crime writer, Wilfred Gregg, with his personal b/plate. Lightly browned edges, o/w Vg+ in Vg+ dw. which has sl. sunned sp.