Sunday, June 24, 2018

Remarkable Rogues

Charles Kingston - Remarkable Rogues (1921)

Archive.org direct link
Open Library main page

Librivox audio book


Might as well re-launch the blog with a true crime book before heading back to obscure classical writers and forgotten historians.  Kingston collects stories of then-recent criminals, noting that we "are content to behold crime through the eyes of our favourite journal and it is impossible to complain that the press does not cater fully for us in this respect."  If only he could have jumped a head a century.

The chapter headings include The Monte Carlo Trunk Murderess, The Bootmaker's Royal Wooing, Belle Star the Girl Bushranger, The Woman with the Fatal Eyes and The Secret Princess of Posen.  I've only skimmed this but Kingston isn't interested in journalism so much as straight storytelling, and though he claims to have made efforts to get the facts I have some doubts.  (One contemporary review says Kingston isn't up to the standard of William Roughead but then who is?)

I haven't been able to pin down the author except that in the space of a few years he is credited with several books - some are available digitally such as this one, Famous Morgantic Marriages (1919), Dramatic Days at the Old Bailey (1920) and Society Sensations (1922).  They all appear fairly similar in approach so my guess is was somebody who gave a try at writing, produced some popular works, then returned to whatever he did before.