The crime of murder has had a compelling attraction for writers, and readers, since stories were first written. Most of the best detectives deal with murder, for it is the most final and horrible of crimes.
In fiction, whether the detective be a Victorian drug-addict, a pipe-smoking Frenchman, a moustachioed Belgian, or a public-school policeman, the outcome in general terms is predictable.
In real life, this is not always so, and even when a case is finally finished, there is sometimes left a nagging doubt if justice has been done.
The fifteen cases dealt with in this book represent some of the most interesting in the history of capital crime in New Zealand between 1847 and 1941. All of them have something of a distinctive New Zealand flavour.
They are wide-ranging in time, place, and method; from Dunedin to Great Barrier Island, from shot-gun to the subtleties of poison.
Each case is complete in itself; the setting, the crime, the characters, the detective work, the court case, and the final verdict.