Crimes and Punishment

by Marshall Cavendish Corporation

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0863073697
• ISBN13: 9780863073694
• Release Date: August 1985
• Publisher: Cavendish Square Publishing
• Length: 8 Pages

Customer Reviews

Eight volumes of crime, oddly organized but fascinating

Potential purchasers please take note: "Crimes and Punishment" is actually an eight-volume set of books under the ISBN 0 86307 369 7, so if you're planning to buy it you might want to make certain you're getting all eight books. Each volume of "Crimes and Punishment," published in 1986 supposedly spotlights a different aspect of aberrant human behavior but I had problems understanding how the volumes are organized. For instance, Volume 1 jumps around from Bluebeard to Karen Silkwood to the Scarsdale Diet Doctor murder to the Salem Witch trials. Each article in itself is interesting, detailed, and illustrated with black-and-white photographs and drawings. However, no author is given. Most of the cases discussed come from the United States and Great Britain, although a few European criminals are included. Volume 2 concerns itself with gangsters but also records the crimes of serial killers such as Jack the Ripper and the Hillside Strangler. Volume 3 veers off into spy stories, and "Operation Madam Kitty" which was a Nazi-operated brothel in Berlin during World War II where many diplomats unwittingly recorded their deepest feelings concerning Hitler. There is also an article on the philosopher, Jeremy Bentham and his ideas on prison reform--and a photograph of his seated 'auto-ikon' (articulated and clothed skeleton plus death-mask) with his actual head resting between his feet. This bizarre display can be found in the university that he founded. "So great was the philosopher's own enthusiasm [for auto-ikons] that he even had a special pair of glass eyes made to match his living ones, to be fitted into his empty eye sockets after death; he unnerved friends by absent-mindedly rolling them around on the table at dinner." Volume 4 ranges from "The Most Haunted House in England" to the Nuremburg war crimes trials. Volume 5 continues the war crimes theme with "The Nazi Hunter" but also includes articles on Wild Bill Hickok and the Manson Family, who had previously made their bow in Volume 1. Volume 6 has several articles on Interpol, but also features the body-snatchers Burk and Hare, who also show up in "Together They Slay" in Volume 1. Volume 7 includes several FBI cases plus "The Trial of Captain Kidd" interspersed among various assassinations. Volume 8 aspires to an alphabetical sequence starting with "Alcatraz" and ending with "Witches," "X-Rays," "Yellow Kid," and "Zimmerman." At least, I was able to figure out the organizational technique of this last volume. The (unnamed) writers are supposedly "experts in their various fields, using the full range of their knowledge and talent as they explore the minds of psychopathic killers..." The range of the articles is truly astounding and not a little eccentric. True crime buffs will enjoy this set of books for its thousands of obscure facts and photographs about even well-known crimes. My only two complaints (besides organization) are that the forensic techniques are quite out-of-dat