Tuesday, July 27, 2021

Book Notes: Dean Jobb on Dr Cream


There's a great review in the New York Times of the veteran Halifax writer Dean Jobb's new book The Case Of The Murderous Dr. Cream: The Hunt for a Victorian Era Serial Killer, about the Canadian obstetrician who just seemed to like murdering women. W.M. Akers writes:

Jobb’s excellent storytelling makes the book a pleasure to read. He evokes the “plank sidewalks and muddy streets” of London, Ontario, as skillfully as he does the “netherworld of flickering gaslight and sinister fog” of London, England. Judicious shifts in time period, from Cream’s early murders in the United States to his later spree in London, keep the narrative moving, while carefully chosen digressions into the histories of poison, surgery and law enforcement provide much needed breaks from the doctor. 

It's a HarperCollins book in Canada (where the only review I have seen is a not very enthusiastic one in Quill and Quire), but it is the edition published in the United States by Algonquin Books, which has a well regarded nonfiction list, that has been drawing American attention.

Update, July 28.  Dean Jobb sez:

Thanks for the shout-out about my book on Dr. Cream! One of my MFA students sent it along.

 FYI, in Canada there were positive reviews in the Toronto Star, Winnipeg Free Press, Saltwire (the Halifax Chronicle Herald) the Quebec City Chronicle-Telegraph, the website Truecrimeindex and Zoomer Magazine. 

See my website for details: https://www.deanjobb.com/the-murderous-doctor-cream 


 
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