This entertaining group of eight essays concerning great crimes of murder reveals the author’s affinity, not only with the wellsprings of human passion, but also with the means of bringing them into lucid focus, using the slow unfolding of telling detail.

Marie Belloc Lowndes made her name with murder. Her most famous book was a hugely successful novel, The Lodger, based upon the awful deeds of Jack the Ripper, which has been filmed many times. In this book she recounts eight terrible crimes which took place in France, Scotland, England, Algeria and Belgium, underscoring with clear journalistic ease cases of appalling passion, misplaced devotion, secret alliances, unbearable greed and corrosive fear of exposure.

Underlying all of these cases is mystery. In one way or another, all of them had elements which initially baffled analysts; they remained partially unsolved, or at least contested, and were in some cases only concluded by the discovery of one tiny detail. Some remain mysteries to this day. This splendidly readable compendium was first published in 1914.