You couldn''t make it up: incredible real-life criminal cases

A fascinating A-Z of murderous crimes which spans the globe and the centuries in uncovering the extremes of human criminality in all its strangeness.

This collection of unusual, if not sensational, murder cases recalls strange crimes of the past and offers insights into particularly macabre and shocking modern murders. Many of the cases also shed light on advances in crime detection, law enforcement and forensic science.

Cases include: Krystian Bala, the Polish writer who killed a rival, and then used the murder as the plot for a novel; Alexander Pichuskin, who was stopped one short of killing the 64 victims he needed to ''fill a chess board''; John Lee, ''the man they could not hang'' who survived three attempts to execute him; and Adelaide Bartlett, who was accused of killing her husband with chloroform, but was acquitted because no one could work out how she had done it - and she wouldn''t say.