View source for Dorset Murders (True Crime History) by Nicola Sly

{{infobox1 
|title= Dorset Murders (True Crime History)
|author= Nicola Sly 
|reviewer= John Van der Kiste
|genre=True Crime
|summary= Twenty two true crime stories from rural and urban Dorset, spanning the years 1818-1946 and includi ng the cases of Alma and Francis Rattenbury, and Charlotte Bryant.
|rating=4.5 
|buy= Yes
|borrow= Yes
|pages=160 
|publisher= The History Press
|date= November 2008
|isbn=978-0750951074 
|cover=0750951079
|aznuk=0750951079
|aznus=0750951079
}}

Having examined a number of true crime cases from Bristol in her [[Bristol Murders by Nicola Sly|last book]], the author now does the same for largely rural yet not always idyllic Dorset.  Twenty two murders, committed between 1818 and 1946, come under the microscope in these pages.

I had come across a few before, such as the unhappy tale of the ill-matched Francis and Alma Rattenbury (far apart enough in age to be father and daughter, rather than husband and wife) and her lover George Stoner, and the alleged husband-poisoner Charlotte Bryant, but the vast majority were new to me.  As with any book of this kind, they make for reading which is enthralling on one level, but often poignant and quite spine-chilling on another.  Sly calls the story of the Wright family in 1926 one of the most tragic she has ever come across in her close-on thirty years of studying the subject.  The suicide pact made by Frederick Young and Flossie Davies in 1925, in which the latter became pregnant and was killed and he cheated the hangman by dying of his self-inflicted injuries not long after being sentenced to death, cannot be far behind.

Most of the murders resulted from not uncommon motives.  We read of husbands and wives who needed to dispose of their spouses in an age when less liberal divorce laws gave them little alternative.  Other killers were plainly mentally unhinged and far too ready to reach for the nearest weapon when somebody was unfortunate enough to get on the wrong side of them.  A few might be regarded as victims of circumstance (or if you want to be uncharitable, of their own indiscretion or folly), such as the pitiful tale in 1869 of an apparently respectable young woman who found herself in the family way, murdered her baby boy and was sentenced to two years for concealment of the birth.  One or two, notably that of the Coverdale Kennels case at Tarrant Keynston in 1931, remain unsolved to this day.

As with the author's previous book, all the cases are told clearly with a meticulous eye for detail, and a praiseworthy lack of judgmentalism.  There's also a refreshing absence of purple prose, a common fault of books of this genre (though happily not the True Crime series, of which this is but one of many titles) where the author tends to stray into the psychological, semi-fictional 'let's get inside the mind of the perpetrator as he/she grapples with fate' style.  A good selection of contemporary and modern photographs and a map of the county complement the text and make it an excellent read for any true crime enthusiast.

If you haven't already read it, why not try the same author's aforementioned [[Bristol Murders by Nicola Sly|Bristol Murders]], or [[Mixed Blessings: My Psychic Life by Diane Lazarus]].

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