Customer Reviews

The Mammoth Book of True Crime: A New Edition (Mammoth Books)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As usual, Wilson's obsessive accounts of the criminal mind at work are unnerving and in this book he delivers a fantastic range of disgusting tales and trials. I expected something at the end , along the lines of "if you actually finished this book, get psychiatric help because you need it." In other words, a thoroughly entertaining read, if just a tad too wild for bedtime (don't read it to your children; read parts of it to people who bore you, just to get back at them). However, where is the editing? There's a countless number of mistakes regarding dates, and centuries are jumped within the same story so I didn't know when to picture FBI forensics or Holmes and Watson. There are several typos too: for example, homosexual brothel became homosexual brother, not the same thing at all. The result is a feeling of a book hastily assembled and this takes away from its credibility (which, considering the subject, might not be a bad thing). Nevertheless, I've had a second lock put on the door which gave me little comfort as I read these true stories of murder, mutilation, cannibalism, torture..

did anyone who complained about this book, and felt that it was lacking more recent crimes, turn to the copywrite page in the beginning?
"Originally Published in Crime and Society 1973/4/5/6"
the parts written in 1998 are the introduction and pages 95-104 and 506-22. Meaning the chapters on Computer Crime and Servants Who Kill are the only chapters written in 1998.
I felt this book was a good collection of crimes. Sometimes the more recent crimes shown on tv and in newer books can be a bit redundent, it was nice to read about crimes that took place before DNA could solve everything.

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who enjoys the true crime genre. There's loads of material in this lengthy book, and the best part is that the author avoids the well-trodden paths of the more famous crimes. I read a lot of true crime, and most of the cases in the book were new to me. It's very readable and engrossing.

Now my complaints: first, the author sometimes over-reaches his own abilities on psychological analysis of criminals and their crimes. He should leave the psychoanalysis to the professionals.

Second, when he does introduce the work of legitimate psychiatrists, he goes back to work done in the first half of the twentieth century and doesn't use anything more recent. Several times I checked the publication date to be sure I read 1998 and not 1968--If this book is so recent, why would he look to Freud to explain the psychology of crime instead of the more recent (and probably the more accurate work) of Robert Ressler, et al?

On a related note is the terminology he uses, which also makes the book seem dated. On the chapter headed "Mass Murders", not one of the accounts is about a criminal who kills multiple people at one time. It seems pretty basic that anyone writing true crime should know the distinction between mass murder and serial murder. He also sometimes describes the perpetrators/victims with a somewhat Victorian sensationalism, referring to them as "sex maniacs" or a 15-year old girl in the 1950's as the "mistress" of a boy her own age (who says "mistress" when referring to an adolescent boyfriend-girlfriend relationship in the 20th century???)

But the author's sometime Victorian mentality (and word choice) is only slightly annoying, and the plethora of true crime tales more than makes up for it.

This book was very informative! I couldn't put it down once I started. It is set up much like an encyclopedia, alphabetical order. But trust me, it is far from an encyclopedia!! It highlights one case per section, which I think is a very good idea! I highly recomend this book to anyone, especially true crime fantics!!

Fascinating read, especially for detailing some of the European crimes that are largely unknown on the U.S. side of the pond. In fact, roughly 2/3 of the book is dedicated to these crimes, the remaining being devoted to the dreaded American criminal. The inherent irony in his writing style is that although most of the book details eurocrimes, when the Americans are referenced there is usually commentary regarding the prospective socio-psychological "problems" in American society which result in these crimes although nary a mention is made to the potential causes of the crimes which occur in Euro society. The socialist slant placed on his deductions of motive and cause along with some dreadful editing chop two whole stars off this 600+ page monstrosity. Because it dealt with some crimes hitherto unknown to me (of course, along with some world-famous ones as well), this was a fascinating read. But I'm telling you once you get to those areas of atrocious editing, psychological profiling with the blinders on and hardcore leftist slant you may be left wincing (unless you're a bad psychologist hardcore leftist who enjoys poor editing).

The crimes he selected for this work were reasonably well researched and his choices were interesting. (Although there are notes in the new edition that some of the stories he reported are myths) As far as finding out about different interesting crimes, this book is tops.
However, his analysis of the crimes is lacking. He provides no basis for many of his ideas and shows tremendous conservative bias.
He states that a woman's natural instinct is to take care of a house while men are naturally more aggressive and take more risks.
He blames the sexual revolution (instead of the alienation caused by a large society) for the outbreak of serial murderers.

His analysis of the motivations behind the crimes seems to be seldom accurate and often biased, but the crimes he chooses vary widely and are generally interesting.

A great book by philospher Colin Wilson, murder and mayheim seen as a
by product of a society, great insight into nature of crime and environment. He gives amazing examples of crime and endless criminals.

if you are into true crime this is a great book to have. lots of little tidbits on cases that i am familiar with and also shocking cases that i have never heard of. the book is huge and it took me forever to read.

Colin Wilson is is a prolific author, he has written over 90 books, since the publication of his "The Outsider" decades ago. There are certain themes that Mr. Wilson deals with in his writings, and it is also exhibited here. In his writings, he has attempted to understand man, and there is no law fortuantely saying that you must be a Phd in order to do so, and it is a presumptous fallacy to say that non Phd's cannot make a contribution to the subject. What can be even more infuriating for some is a non Phd rejecting academic opinion--and being right. A reviewer here criticized Wilson for "psychologizing" and for using older sources. These are erroneous criticisms. Wilson in this book attempts more than a mere compilation of crimes, but tries to understand them. And the fact that someone
he cites in helping him understand crimes wrote earlier in the 20th Century is irrelevant. Just because someone wrote something long ago does not mean that it is erroneous.
Wilson does not engage in Freudian psycho-analysis--in fact, he reject it, correctly. While the desire for sex is a factor in human psychology, it is not the only thing. Wilson follows the psychologist Abraham Maslow. Maslow argued that man has a hierarchy of needs, and the highest is the creative urge. And, as Wilson says "Anybody who wants to do a job well, just for the sheer pleasure of it, is expressing the creative urge." (page 342). This psychological theory is supported by the history of crime. When society is at a subsistence level, it is for the needs for food and territory that most crimes are committed. Then by the 1940s, when society had advanced by then from the subsistence level, the sex crime, once the rarest of all reasons for murder, had become commonplace. Now, Wilson says we are in the age of the "self-esteem murder." WIlson then gives an interesting reason why the murder rate may drop in the future. The highest need is the creative urge, and creativity and murder are usually incompatible. Thus "if society can get past the stage of the self-esteem killer, the murder rate should drop steeply."
As to the theory that creativity and murder are incompatable, Wilson offers as support that he can only find one writer who has committed murder. Writers, like others, have committed crimes, but murder by a writer is almost non-existent.
If there is a possible weakness to this book, it is that a certain type of criminal type was not dealt with, and that is because it occurred on the world stage after Wilson wrote this book. It may be called the "Super Villian." To quote Jonah Goldberg's article at nationalreview.com, "James Bond Was Right."
The villians of James Bond movies, like Blofeld--unfortuanelty may become a greater reality. In the past, the state, through the power to tax, was the only organization that had the reasources to inflict massive damage. With the general development of the economy and technology, individuals or an organization can attain great wealth, and then use their wealth for nefarous purposes, such as Bin Laden and his al-quida organization, or narco-organizations in South America.