by David King (2011)
Death in the City of Light is the gripping true story of a brutal serial killer who unleashed his own reign of terror in Nazi-occupied Paris. As decapitated heads and dismembered body parts surfaced in the Seine, Commissaire Georges-Victor Massu, head of the Brigade Criminelle, was tasked with traking down the elusive murderer in a twilight world of Gestapo, gangsters, Resistance fighters, pimps, prostitutes, spies, and other shadowy figures of the Parisian underworld. The main suspect was Dr. Marcel Petiot, a handsome, charming physician with remarkable charisma. He was "The People's Doctor," known for his many acts of kindness and generosity, not least in providing free medical care for the poor. Petiot, however, would eventually be charged with 27 murders, although authorities suspected the total was considerably higher, perhaps even as many as 150. Who was being slaughtered, and why? Was Petiot a sexual sadist, as the press suggested, killing for thrills? Was he allied with the Gestapo, or, on the contrary, the French Resistance? Or did he work for no one other than himself? Trying to solve the many mysteries of the case, Massu -- an inspiration for Georges Simenon's Inspector Maigret -- would unravel a plot of unspeakable deviousness. When Petiot was finally arrested, the French police hoped for answers. But the trial soon became a circus. Attempting to try all 27 cases at once, the prosecution stumbled in its marathon cross-examinations, and Petiot, enjoying the spotlight, responded with astonishing ease. His attorney, René Floriot -- a rising star in the world of criminal defense -- also effectively, if aggresively, countered the charges. Yet despite a team of prosecuting attorneys, dozens of witnesses, and literally more than one ton of evidence, Petiot's brilliance and wit threatened to win the day. Drawing extensively on many new sources, including the massive classified French police file on Petiot, Death in the City of Light is a brilliant evocation of Nazi-occupied Paris and a harrowing exploration of murder, betrayal, and evil of staggering proportions. - Jacket flap.
Terry Ganey
Charles Hatcher, who murdered at least 16 people, not only killed, maimed and ruined the lives of his victims and their families, but was also responsible for the imprisonment of an innocent man. In his 37 years of crime, Hatcher became adept at manipulating the justice system, outwitting officials in several states.
Peter Manso
"From growing up the son of alcoholic, philandering parents to his recent public agony as the father of a convicted killer, Marlon Brando has lived a life beset by personal demons. Behind the myth, beneath his immense fame and fortune, he is a troubled man whom few people really know. For the first time, Brando unveils him whole: from the height of his talents to the depths of his despair; his sexual compulsions, the endless years of psychotherapy, the girlfriends who've committed suicide, his eating disorders, his notorious psychological manipulations, his lifelong love/hate relationships with his children (legitimate and not), his involvement with the radical American Indian Movement, and his controversial seclusion in Tahiti. Gripping, astonishing, and utterly revealing, Brando is both a towering achievement and exactly the biography that its subject so richly deserves."--BOOK JACKET.
Frank McLynn
Napoleon Bonaparte's character and achievements have always divided critics and historians. In this compelling biography, Frank McLynn draws on the most recent scholarship and throws a brilliant light on this most paradoxical of men -- as military leader, emperor, and lover. Tracing Napoleon's extraordinary career, the author examines the Promethean legend from his Corsican roots, through the years of the French Revolution and his military triumphs, to his coronation in 1804 and ultimate defeat and imprisonment. McLynn brilliantly reveals the extent to which Napoleon was both existential hero and plaything of Fate; mathematician and mystic; intellectual giant and moral pygmy; great man and deeply flawed human being. In this work McLynn offers a vivid and valuable canvas of, and new dimension to, eighteenth-century European history. He also brings the reader, as never before, closer to understanding the much mythologized Napoleon. - Back cover.
Robert K. Tanenbaum and Peter S. Greenberg
In October, 1966, Charles Yukl, a mild-mannered piano teacher, brutally strangled and sexually abused a young secretary who was his student. In August, 1974, he killed again after being released 9 years early, despite pleas from himself and the victim's family. (Google Books)