Extreme Killers: Tales of the World’s Most Prolific Serial Killers

By Michael Newton

Page I bailed on: 18

Verdict: I’ve nothing against Michael Newton. I thought his Encyclopedia of Serial Killers adequate. But the fact is that he published “more than 339 novels and non-fiction books as of 2020,” and this more than suggests that he’d become a bit of a machine. In the author’s bio for his Encyclopedia (second edition published in 2006) the number given is only “more than 180 books.” In any event, he died in 2021.

I’ve also nothing against this Profiles in Crime series. I thought Killer Cults: Stories of Charisma, Deceit, and Death adequate, if only just. But as I said in my review of that volume, I didn’t see how there was much need for such books in the age of Wikipedia anyway.

I didn’t get far into this one. The first killer covered was Gilles de Rais, a French nobleman in the fifteenth century who may have been the original Bluebeard. The second was Erzsébet Báthory, the “Bloody Countess,” a Hungarian noble who may have been the original Dracula. Both figures have since entered into legend and the real nature and extent of their crimes is a matter of some debate. Their trials can’t be divorced from the historical context, where accusations of the most outrageous behaviour weren’t uncommon. Unfortunately, establishing that context takes time, and in an anthology like this that’s not what you’re going to get, with each chapter being limited to around 15 pages. So it just wasn’t adding up to anything more than what you’d expect from a quick Internet search and wasn’t any fun to read.

The DNF files