Extreme Killers: Tales of the World’s Most Prolific Serial Killers

by Michael Newton

For fans of true crime, this fourth entry in the Profiles in Crime series presents history’s most “elite” serial killers—master murderers who stretched the psychic envelope and racked up the largest number of victims.
 
Historical in scope and international in breadth, this collection of true-crime stories chronicles 15 of the most infamous “extreme killers” who ever lived—those with the largest number of confirmed kills, in many cases more than 50. The subjects range from 15th-century French child killer Gilles de Rais, purportedly the model for the folk legend of “Bluebeard,” to Henry Lee Lucas and Otis Toole, who inspired the film Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer; to Samuel Little, America’s most prolific serial killer with 60 confirmed and 93 claimed murdered, to Mikhail Popkov, dubbed “The Werewolf” by Russian media for having slain more than 70 women between 1992 and 2010.

Genres: True Crime, Nonfiction, Crime

272 pages, Paperback

Published October 6, 2020

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

From Wikipedia:
"Michael Newton (born 1951) is an American author best known for his work on Don Pendleton's Mack Bolan series. Newton first began work on the Executioner series by co-writing "The Executioner's War Book" with Don Pendleton in 1977. Since then he has been a steady writer for the series with almost 90 entries to his credit, which triples the amount written by creator Don Pendleton. His skills and knowledge of the series have allowed him to be picked by the publishers to write the milestone novels such as #100, #200, and #300.

Writing under the pseudonym Lyle Brandt, Michael Newton has also become a popular writer of Western novels. He has written a number of successful non-fiction titles as well, including a book on genre writing (How to Write Action Adventure Novels). His book Invisible Empire: The Ku Klux Klan in Florida won the Florida Historical Society's 2002 Rembert Patrick Award for Best Book in Florida History. Newton's "Encyclopedia of Cryptozoology" won the American Library Association's award for Outstanding Reference Work in 2006."

Pen names: Lyle Brandt, Don Pendleton, Jack Buchanan

Bibiliography available here.

Reviews

[Samantha Scheer · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars ***

The Criminal Minds fanatic in me thoroughly enjoyed this! My only complaint is I wish It had more current serial killers as opposed to the few that were mentioned before the 1900’s.

[T.J. Hoffpauir · Rating 3 out of 5]

It wasn't the best book but it didn't suck either. There were parts of the book, even 2-3 pages long, that when you're reading it you feel like you are just reading a graph. I don't know but with so many consecutive numbers, it's impossible for me to fully comprehend what that would look like if they just put it in some kind of graph or even listed the sentences in bullet points or something. At Barnes & Nobles it was in the section with all the different $5 books and it's not like I expected it to be some banger of a book, just filler and I could have been reading something else. It wasn't as bad as this review makes it sound now that I'm wrapping it up.

[Shannon Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

for such an interesting topic this read so slow and boring. I skimmed a few of the pages because I was bored and just wanted to finish. a few of the stories dragged on and the ones that deserved more pages were cut short

[Emma Tecklenburg · Rating 2 out of 5]

very informative but i think reading out of a textbook would be more engaging

[Alyssah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some chapters were interesting, most of it was boring.

[maddy eger · Rating 2 out of 5]

Skip.

[Vivian Gunnels · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very good and intriguing for non fiction and true crime lovers. Can be very dry at times though.

[Karen Bullock · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars for this informative true crime catalog of 15 of the most prolific serial killers to have “graced” the social media/news.
Some names you may recognize and others you will not.
Each of the documented criminals have had a harrowing past that may or may not have had an influence on the choices they made going forth into their future.
The author shows some fabulous research and documentation.
Impressive.

[Alice Hanov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extreme Killers- Volume 4 by Michael Newton

🌟🌟🌟🌟

GENRE: True crime
TROPES:
PROS:
🔪A variety of killers - ages, decades and countries.

CONS:
☠️ It was a little boring.

This was my first non-fiction in a while, and it was educational but a little dull. I do think it’s important to remember the people who lost their lives to these monsters, but I think I’ll stick to documentaries.

[Maddy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book gets 2 stars because I found the language used to describe sex workers and victims/survivors who were sex workers to be really inappropriate and disrespectful. Also, there were many parts of this book that were just straight up boring. I think many of the individuals written about were interesting, but this book was often tedious to read.

[Calli · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was an informative read, every now and then it could get a bit tedious and boring but it was fascinating to learn about how other countries handle and sentence people who have committed heinous crimes.