Dead Ends
B.C. Crime Stories
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Forty crimes. Forty crimes of betrayal, greed, and desperation. Forty crimes that shed light on our shared past, and our lives today.
Murderers and scam artists. Masterminds and bunglers. The infamous and the forgotten. Dead Ends looks at them all.
Leo Mantha, the last man hanged in B.C. Wong Foon Sing, the Chinese houseboy kidnapped and tortured by the police. Pickton and the Pattison kidnappers. Olson and the McLean Boys.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"British Columbia has a rich tradition of outlaws, wrongdoing, and evil," writes Willcocks, and his selection of 40 cases stretching back as far as 1864 ably illustrates that claim. He writes in an attractively hardboiled reporter's style, taking readers into one case this way: "Drugs and sex. Death in a cruise ship penthouse. Mysterious changes to a will. Odd Characters. And money lots and lots of money." Capturing the gist of each true crime story, Willcocks also reveals a "great deal about the rest of us, and the society we live in." Devoting a few succinct pages to each crime, he covers the still-notorious such as Robert Pickton, Clifford Olson, and the Air India conspirators, as well as a gallery of lesser known bombers, kidnappers, thugs, killers, corrupt upstanding' citizens (from police chiefs to religious leaders), and deadly standoffs between government and outliers with the author frequently indicating the excesses and ethical lapses of those in power. He chooses a few simply because they are "darn good stories," as in an RCMP sting to capture a murderous housewife and the sensational milkshake murderer' of 1965. Though some register as arbitrary inclusions, all are told with compelling precision.