Dr Harold Shipman may have been the most notorious of his ilk. but he was not alone. Despite the high regard in which they are held by society, doctors are driven by the same desires and needs as any other human being. And they are also susceptible to those demons that make murderers of some of us. But amongst this cabal, there is one thing they all have in common... an utter contempt for human life. In this well researched insight into what society regards as one of the ultimate betrayals of trust
Kenneth J Gibson details 17 cases from around the world that betray differing motives and modus operandi. Among the doctors he covers are a dictator, a revolutionary, a supposed French resistance fighter, a German war hero, someone who perhaps did not kill at all and other assorted rogues from all walks of life.
Many of their names bring a chill to anyone trying to understand why they committed the crimes they did: Buck Ruxton, Hawley Crippen and Josef Mengele are among them along with perhaps the most horrific serial killer in US history, Henry Howard Holmes, the Monster of 63rd Street.
The doctors investigated cover a period of time from the French Revolution in the 1790s when Dr Jean Paul Marat incited the mob to wholesale slaughter before being stabbed to death in his bath, right up to the new millennium when Shipman took his own life in his prison cell in 2004 rather than admit to his demons in court.
Throughout all these portraits of murder one thing is certain... much innocent blood is spilled as the crimes of these monsters are retold in chilling detail.