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A murderer claimed that he could not be tried for a crime he did not deny but could not remember committing. A soldier accidentally killed his wife-with no idea of how he had done it until a pathologist at his trial explained to the court. The verdict on a crime of passion made legal history. A killer who, after his acquittal, confessed his guilt to a Sunday newspaper, was finally convicted in Switzerland of a second murder.
Outstanding cases all-those of Podola, Sergeant Hicks, Fantle and Hume-just four among the vital dramas enacted in the criminal courts during the year 1959-60. In the latest volume of this popular series, Rupert Furneaux vividly re-creates, in detail, these and nine other equally sensational criminal cases of the year.
Podola was not the only murderer of a British policeman: five were tragically killed in the course of duty. Yet Marwood's execution aroused a storm of protest. Mr. Furneaux's discussion of this case, and of relations in general between police and public, provides a highly topical and pertinent commentary on a controversial subject.
Two chapters on sex killers-Michael Dowdall and the "Birmingham hostel" murderer Patrick Byrne-grimly illustrate the appalling legal problems of such macabre cases. The question posed by Fantle, Hicks and Edith Chubb was very different-when does murder become manslaughter?
Then there was the young television actor Cavan Malone-was he justified in killing to protect himself and two terrified women? Mr. Furneaux also discusses the brilliantly organized, large-scale robberies which seem to indicate that nowadays crime does pay; and in the long Foreword, recalling certain cases included in earlier volumes of the series, he reveals their aftermath.
Here, in the latest of his surveys of important trials which have helped to win Rupert Furneaux an out¬standing place amongst contemporary writers, is a dramatically absorbing record, at once tragic, thrilling and bizarre, of crime, crim¬inals and the courts.
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