True crime + the Gestapo + occupied Paris + creepy psychopathic serial killer + pathetic victims dying horrible deaths.. . I know: what's not to like, right?

The Twitter version is: Dr. Marcel Petiot, a classic serial killer-childhood-cat-torturer, runs a ring wherein he attracts desperate victims with the funds to escape to South America via Portugal. As he aids them, they come to horrible end in his medical building and he ends up with several dozen suitcases and body fragments. Only one person escapes with his life. As a reviewer on Amazon said (though I could not find this in so many words) Dr. Petiot was ". . . so dangerous .. . . that even the Gestapo urged the French Police to locate and arrest him with all urgency." Yikes.

Part of Dr. Petiot's MO was infiltrating, or pretending to infiltrate, the Resistance. That and the immediate postwar chaos--which were the bad guys?--came in handy as he tried his French charm on the jury. One piece of evidence had him daring them to try an item of men's haberdashery on him; if it did not fit, why then, he must be innocent, non?

The cast of characters becomes a test of memory as many of them seem to have a name, a nom du guerre, and an alias. Then there are the French names, the German names and ranks, and the poor victims, many of whom also seemed to have aliases. Hard to keep the bad guys straight. And the victims: there are so many that their tales are understandably short and it's often the same sad tale over and over.

Interesting to read this in view of the Amanda Knox trial/re-trial in Italy, as the denouement shows us the working of a mid-twentieth century French courtroom. And you have to think: are we any better today, with our lengthy, expensive trials, at prosecuting killers, serial or otherwise?

This is really better than a 3/5, but for a 4 rating I would like to have retained more facts (a smaller cast of characters might have helped, but what can you do? It's history), and I wish it had been written a little more artfully.