Butchers Work, Harold Schechter
Butchers Work, Harold Schechter
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Butcher's Work
True Crime Tales of American Murder and Madness

Author: Harold Schechter

Narrator: Christopher Lane

Unabridged: 8 hr 1 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/08/2022

Synopsis

A Civil War veteran who perpetrated one of the most ghastly mass slaughters in the annals of U.S. crime. A nineteenth-century female serial killer whose victims included three husbands and six of her own children. A Gilded Age “Bluebeard” who did away with as many as fifty wives throughout the country. A decorated World War I hero who orchestrated a murder that stunned Jazz Age America. While other infamous homicides from the same eras—the Lizzie Borden slayings, for example, or the “thrill killing” committed by Leopold and Loeb—have entered into our cultural mythology, these four equally sensational crimes have largely faded from public memory. A quartet of gripping historical true-crime narratives, Butcher’s Work restores these once-notorious cases to vivid, dramatic life.

About Harold Schechter

Harold Schechter is professor emeritus at Queens College, CUNY. Among his more than forty books are a series of historical true-crime narratives about America’s most infamous serial killers, including Hell’s Princess. He is married to the poet, Kimiko Hahn.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Debra on October 23, 2022

In Butcher's Work: True Crime Tales of American Murder and Madness, the author presents four killers, their victims and their heinous crimes. Their crimes are not well known as other crimes committed around the same times as their garnered more press and revulsion. The author did an impressive amoun......more

Goodreads review by Brad on November 11, 2024

Harold Schechter's approach to True Crime is one to which new writer's of True Crime should aspire. His books are not about the lascivious details, nor the psychology of those committing the crimes, nor about the "heroic" investigators who've caught a "monster," although those elements do occur in h......more

Goodreads review by Valerity (Val) on July 24, 2022

I've enjoyed Schechter's books in the past and liked this one as well. It's always a good thing when I can find true crime cases that I've never heard about before after reading it for nearly 50 years now. This book tells about some that were new to me, so a bit obscure to the average reader. They m......more

Goodreads review by Dan on October 27, 2022

My thanks to both NetGalley and the University of Iowa Press for an advanced copy of this true crime collection detailing acts from the turn of the 20th century. People love the bad guy. Not just the antihero, but murderers and serial killers have fans and groupies who can tell more about the life o......more

Quotes

“Harold Schechter is America’s dean of true crime, plundering the darkest corners of our history, and with this collection he delivers again. Taken together, these tales take on the quality of campfire ghost stories—absorbing, chilling, and hard to forget.”—Robert Kolker, New York Times bestselling author, Lost Girls

“Master of true crime, Harold Schechter offers a macabre smorgasbord of long-forgotten misdeeds. Each story—about a mass axe murderer, a ‘poison fiend,’ a prolific Bluebeard killer, and a scheming war veteran—shines a fascinating light on the darkest impulses of human nature. You’ll read this in one sitting, but keep the lights on.”—Abbott Kahler, author, The Ghosts of Eden Park

“Harold Schechter is among the top true-crime writers of our time. With this diverse collection, he demonstrates his skill once more at transforming historical chronicles into page-turning tales. He’s a master of research and storytelling.”—Katherine Ramsland, professor of forensic psychology and author, How to Catch a Killer

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