The Bride in the Bathtub and Other Strange True Tales

A man who drowns his brides for their money. A butcher who sells the flesh of vagrant boys. An American lodger-killer called the Gorilla. A French peasant woman who swindles half of Paris with a sealed safe. And Jack the Ripper.

These six pieces come from Maki Itsuma's sensational 1929-1930 magazine series of strange true stories, a popular series in its day. Told in a breathless first-person voice, they take the reader on a tour of Europe and America's most notorious crimes: George Joseph Smith and the Brides in the Bath, Fritz Haarmann of Hanover, Earle Nelson the Dark Strangler, Thérèse Humbert's phantom fortune, the Wolf of Montluel, and the Whitechapel murders.

Here, in a new English translation from the Japanese, are six of them, with their excesses, errors and showmanship preserved and with notes for readers.