‘True Stories Only!’

Abstract

Reading true crime, like reading fiction, may be a leisure activity, a holiday diversion or a keen pastime. It is frequently sold alongside detective fiction and police procedurals and is often consumed by the same readers, dissolving the always straining divisions between fact and fiction. Yet above all, true crime promotes itself as ‘actuality’, as ‘realism’, ‘as existing in fact’. Magazines address the potential buyer with the promise of ‘true stories only’, ‘no fiction’.

Doctors who use their medical knowledge to kill make chilling criminals. And there have been quite a few of them in our century dating back to Dr. Crippen. We all like to think that stretched out on the couch in the privacy of the doctor’s surgery we’re going to be in soothing, healing hands. With the benefit of hindsight, though, we wouldn’t have been too happy in the surgery of Dr. Robert Clements. Here was a veritable upright citizen by day, a real Dr. Jekyll; and a cunning killer by night, Mr. Hyde himself. Clements used his extensive knowledge of poisons gained during a long sojourn in the East to kill no fewer than four of his wives for money. We open this Master Detective Summer Special with the compelling story of this ruthless GP and his tragic victims. Master Detective Summer Special presents lots of other true stories which we hope will give you hours of fascinating holiday reading — come rain or shine!

(Master Detective Editorial for Summer 1996: 1)