There are 16 chapters, covering: assassination; bigamy; burglary; cannibalism; drugs; fraud; gangs, gangsters and organised crime; kidnapping; celebrity slayings; mass murder; serial killers; unsolved homicides; piracy; robbery; secret criminal societies; and terrorism. There is a massive bibliography (a valuable resource) as well as an equally extensive index. A number of chronologies sweep up cases not covered fully in the main body of the text.

Reviewers are not supposed, generally, just to sample the books they consider. But, frankly, what else could one do with a colossal undertaking of this kind? I started by homing in on the entries for some of the cases which hold a particular interest for me. The section on the Zodiac Killer was short but informative, and accompanied by a highly relevant illustration of a solution to one of the murderer's strange cryptograms. The case of Dr Crippen seemed, in contrast, to be dealt with in an oddly perfunctory way, by passing mention in a paragraph about (of all things) train robbery. Given that the Crippen story is one of the most celebrated in the annals of true crime, as well as one of the most historically significant, this was a disappointment. I also searched in vain for discussion of James Maybrick, famously poisoned by arsenic and also a suspected serial killer. The omission seems mystifying, especially given that this English case is well known in the USA -–his wife Florence was American and returned to live there after being released from prison. There is a competent survey of the career of Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper (although the luckless George Oldfield is demoted at one point to the rank of constable) and of the case of the allegedly charming Ted Bundy. I could trace no reference to Dr Harold Shipman, one of the most intriguing of all serial killers, as well as one of the most prolific, nor to Fred and Rose West; perhaps their trials were too recent to fall within the scope of Nash's research. The failure to cover the case of Michael Sams, killer of Julie Dart and kidnapper of Stephanie Slater, also highlights the inevitability that even a book as huge and wide-ranging as this cannot be truly 'comprehensive'. It is equally inevitable that the main focus is on American cases. Coverage of criminal activity in the rest of the world is, however, sufficiently noteworthy for this book properly to claim a truly international character.

One of the merits of this book is that, however much one may think one knows about true crime, some of the cases covered are sure to be unfamiliar. I found the section on bigamy quite fascinating. Johann Otto Hoch, I learned, 'does not hold the record for bigamous marriages in the United States, but the terrible claim that he murdered more bigamous brides than any other such malefactor can certainly be supported through the grim facts of his strange and lethal life.' Nash includes Hoch's 'six rules for success with women' (which some may be tempted to try out, without needing to indulge in bigamy). The tale is accompanied by a striking photograph of Hoch with his jailers in Chicago in 1906, shortly before he was hanged.

The section on unsolved homicides covers, for the most part, well-trodden ground: Jack the Ripper, the Black Dahlia and so on. While cases lacking a solution may seem frustrating, they also offer rich scope for the theorist and amateur detective and it would have been good to have seen a wider coverage of the less celebrated cases.