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True Crime History
The Supernatural Murders: Classic True-crime Stories
Anthology of thirteen true crime investigations that include evidence of supernatural nature.
- GenresTrue Crime
Hardcover
First published May 1, 2011
About the author
Jonathan Goodman
72 books6 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Jonathan Goodman was one of Britain's leading historian of crime. The American critic and historian Jacques Barzun described him as "the greatest living master of the true-crime literature", and Julian Symons, another big name in true-crime, thought of him as "the premier investigator of crime past".
His career as a full-time writer began in the 1970s when he edited the Celebrated Trials series which itself was a successor to Notable British Trials. Then in the 1980s, he worked on numerous anthologies, such as The Railway Murders (1984) and The Seaside Murders (1985), often persuading his many friends to provide a chapter and then writing a short introduction. He also continued to research old murder cases, writing books on the Newcastle upon Tyne murder of Evelyn Foster, the New York locked-room mystery of card-playing womaniser Joseph Elwell and, in 1990, The Passing of Starr Faithfull, the daughter of a Manhattan society couple whose body was washed up on Long Beach, New York, in 1931, for which he received the Crime Writers' Association's gold dagger for non-fiction.
He is most well known for uncovering a solution to Britain's most baffling real-life whodunnit, the murder of Julia Wallace in Liverpool in 1931; he not only exonerated the dead woman's husband but identified and traced the man he believed to be the real murderer. This was documented in The Killing of Julia Wallace (1969).
Jonathan Goodman was one of Britain's leading historian of crime. The American critic and historian Jacques Barzun described him as "the greatest living master of the true-crime literature", and Julian Symons, another big name in true-crime, thought of him as "the premier investigator of crime past".
His career as a full-time writer began in the 1970s when he edited the Celebrated Trials series which itself was a successor to Notable British Trials. Then in the 1980s, he worked on numerous anthologies, such as The Railway Murders (1984) and The Seaside Murders (1985), often persuading his many friends to provide a chapter and then writing a short introduction. He also continued to research old murder cases, writing books on the Newcastle upon Tyne murder of Evelyn Foster, the New York locked-room mystery of card-playing womaniser Joseph Elwell and, in 1990, The Passing of Starr Faithfull, the daughter of a Manhattan society couple whose body was washed up on Long Beach, New York, in 1931, for which he received the Crime Writers' Association's gold dagger for non-fiction.
He is most well known for uncovering a solution to Britain's most baffling real-life whodunnit, the murder of Julia Wallace in Liverpool in 1931; he not only exonerated the dead woman's husband but identified and traced the man he believed to be the real murderer. This was documented in The Killing of Julia Wallace (1969).
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 14, 2019
Review to follow xxx
April 4, 2021
Not a bad book, but not supernatural enough to have the title it does
January 12, 2017
A real disappointment. There is little if anything of the supernatural in this miscellany. It would appear to be a book compiled from the ragbag of research left over from Goodman's other books.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews



