Brian Lane, The Butchers Review

Good Points
A good introduction to a lot of the past's most gruesome killers. Makes a good piece of reference material. Includes some of the more obscure killers.

Bad Points
Not much information on each individual killer.

General Comments
Brian Lane, The Butchers - Synopsis:

"The Butchers covers more than thirty cases of cold-blooded killers who compounded their original crimes of murder with deliberate and macabre mutilations. From Catherine Haynes who set a trend in dismemberment in 1726 when she hacked off her husband's head and tossed it into the Thames, to Dennis Nilsen who was doing much the same to his victims in 1983; from Marcel Petiot's quicklime pits in Occupied Paris, to New York's infamous Albert 'The Cannibal' Fish. However meticulous and ingenious, none of them got away with murder. And, as this fascinating book shows, only painstaking investigation and forensics led to the final unmasking of the sadists and psychotics who sought such bloody concealment of their crimes".



The Butchers offers up a huge list of killers from the past, delivering a brief overview of their crimes and their eventual capture and punishment. Brian Lane manages to cram in loads of individual cases and killers, creating a great introduction for anyone interested in the subject matter. Obviously, the amount of detail is extremely limited for the facts on each case, so the book is purely for the purpose of an introduction our reference material.



The killers that are documented are:

John George Haigh

Maitre Georges Sarret

John White Webster

Henri Desire Landru

Patrick Mahon

Alfred Arthur Rouse

Kurt Erich Tetzner

Ernest Elmes

Albert Fish

Ed Gein

Georg Karl Grossmann

Fritz Haarmann

Catherine Hayes

Pierre Voirbo

Belle Gunness

Louis Voisin

James M'Kay

Dr. Buck Ruxton

Brian Donald Hume

Reginald Dudley & Robert Maynard

Dennis Andrew Nilsen

Nicholas Boyce

Suchnam Singh Sandhu

John Bowden

Arthur & Nizamodeen Hosein

John Lawrence David

Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen

Harry Dobkin

Dr. Marcel Petiot

James Camb

Peter Hogg

Bela Kiss

Hera Bessarabo



The book runs for a total of 314 pages and includes some black & white illustration photo pages. The book does cover some of the more unheard of killers, but again, there are only brief descriptions of their crimes. If the book is read from start to finish, you will find you will get desensitized to the horrific crimes quite quickly, due to the sheer amount of cases that are described in such little room.



Personally, I'm not fond of these types of true crime books as I like to find out a lot about the individuals and be able to analyse their crimes. This type of documentation does not allow this, it merely offers a brief reference to each killer.



The book was first published in 1991 by W.H. Allen & Co PLC.