Publisher's Weekly
A collection of pieces by such true-crime masters as Edmund Pearson and Alan Hynd, among others, this anthology reprises a number of stories already familiar to aficionados of the genre, including those of the seemingly indestructible Michael Malloy, who survived poisoning by anti-freeze, spoiled fish and metal shavings; Dr. Thomas Neill Cream, who, after a prison term in America, moved his locus operandi to London and concentrated on killing prostitutes; Dr. Hawley Crippen, the first murderer caught through the use of wireless telegraphy. Covered also are cases better known in Britain than here, like the trial of Graham Young, whose career as a poisoner began when he was a child and who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1972. In an introduction, Jones sets the scene effectively, touching on noted poisoners in history.