A Book of Remarkable Criminals

Ten cases studied by a barrister turned actor, the elder son of Sir Henry Irving: Charles Peace, the burglar who played the fiddle; Professor Webster of Harvard, who killed a colleague over a debt; the American multiple murderer H. H. Holmes; and a run of French poisoners and killers from Derues to the Gouffé case. Irving read law before he went on the stage and writes about crime with a lawyer's eye for evidence, and his introduction on what makes a criminal remarkable is as good as the cases. Sixty plates of painting, from Daumier and Doré to Caillebotte, trace the criminal's world across two centuries of city streets and landscapes.