Fatal Fascination: a choice of crime

by Christopher Sykes

Burnt Njal –The Irredeemable Crime by N. BalchinWilliam Joyce by C.S. ForesterThe Murder of Darnley by Eric LinklaterThe Murder of the Duke of Enghien by Christopher Sykes.

Genres: True Crime

Paperback

Published January 1, 1964

About the author

1907-

Reviews

[Fishface · Rating 3 out of 5]

In some ways this was a tough book to read, because I am not really brushed up on my Napoleonic history, let alone the Icelandic Sagas -- the true-crime stories in here came from sources like those. The four authors did a valiant job of packing a great deal of information into their relatively short articles on some very interesting cases, but I wondered throughout how much of what I was reading was just a mid-twentieth-century take on cultural norms too far removed for the authors (or me) to understand. The exception of course was the case of William Joyce, but that article had an unfortunate tone of "you all know who and what I'm talking about because it's been so much in the news," when that has not been true for well over 50 years now. As Will Cuppy might point out, these stories point up the fact that Homo sapiens hasn't changed much since the late 800s.