THE SUPER SLEUTHS

Case studies from thirteen of the world's top detectives who tell us about their most dangerous or intriguing cases and state their own opinions about the problem of crime and how society can counter its epidemic of lawbreaking. The stories leap from police agencies in London (the atrocious K. ray Twins who killed for fun) to Paris, Tokyo, Buenos Aires (snatching Eichmann), Los Angeles (the still-unsolved case of the nude bisected girl dubbed The Black Dahlia), the Vienna State Opera House (a ballet dancer murdered in the shower, then a string of girls in the career of an Austrian Jack the Ripper), Rio de Janeiro, Chicago (""The Crime of the Century""--eight nursing trainees butchered in one night by Richard Speck), Toronto, Miami, Long Island, Rome, and San Francisco (The Paper Bag Killer who ran up to victims on the street and shot them through a Safeway shopping bag). The detectives almost uniformly think the law is too soft on killers and that capital punishment is sensible. Motivated by ghastly scenes that suggest a killer may strike again, these detectives don't stand around pondering penology and the moral reshaping of psychopaths. Several of the cases are already covered in full-length studies; the present compilation could have used a central point of view.