Victor McQueen – författare

There are few people alive who are so cruel, so heartless and so undeniably evil that they will kill again and again. Yet at any one time, there are between 25 and 50 active serial killers in the USA, and their chilling crimes have fascinated us since the days of Jack the Ripper. Here you will discover how these heartless killers committed their gruesome deeds, what motivated them to kill and how, eventually, they were caught.This collection features more than 50 compelling stories, including:• Ed Kemper, who dismembered the bodies of his victims once he had finished with them;• Ted Bundy, who abducted, raped and brutally killed more than 30 women;• Charles Manson, who led a cult of mayhem and murder;• Jeffrey Dahmer, who stored a human head in his freezer;• Randy Kraft, who was pulled over for drunk driving with a body in the trunk of his car;• Alexander Pichushkin, who aimed to kill a person for every square on the chessboard.

A gripping analysis of the world''s ten worst serial killers. They have been selected not simply because of their high ''body counts'': these killers are the ones who have most terrified the communities on which they preyed, and in some cases changed the history of the nations in which they operated. This collection focuses solely on the true stories behind the very worst real-life serial killers from across the globe.

Often, the term ''psychopath'' tends to be equated with violent and deranged criminality, but true psychopaths are very different from the way they are portrayed in film or on television. They are aware of the difference between right and wrong: they simply choose to ignore anything that prevents them getting what they want.Real-life psychopaths are not ''mad'' but ''bad'', but they appear on the surface to be entirely ''normal''. One of the pioneers of the modern research effort was Dr. Robert Hare, who developed the Psychopathy Check List Revised (PCL-R) in an attempt to describe the degree of psychopathy an individual displays.The clusters of personality traits and socially-deviant behaviours outlined in the check-list are separated into four types: interpersonal, affective, lifestyle and anti-social. The 10 Worst Psychopaths looks at history''s most notorious and infamous psychopaths, and seeks to show how their life stories illustrate the classic psychopathic personality traits. Though all morally despicable, many of these individuals were charming, popular and charismatic.This is part of our enduring fascination with the psychopath: they are capable of extraordinary inhuman acts, and yet they appear on the surface to be entirely ''normal''. It is only once you know what to look for that the psychopathy beneath the cunning mask becomes obvious. Chillingly, psychopaths are usually the person you would least suspect.