A laconic account of all 20th-century London murders that resulted in execution. It only goes up to the 1950s because after that Britain abolished their death penalty. There are some illustrations and photographs of the premises of the crimes and the judges who presided over the trials, but no pictures of the murderers or victims.

Most of the murders were unexceptional: domestic homicides and family annihilations, jealous lovers, drunken fights, robberies. The most interesting murder, I thought, was the first one, where a woman battered to death her three-year-old for no apparent reason and left his body in a railroad station toilet.

I didn't find this book very interesting, and there were a lot of typos. I would recommend it only to people who are really obsessed with London crimes. ( )