The Oxford Book of Villains

Rating:
Summary: A book you keep going back to
Review: I have owned a copy of this book for a number of years now. It is the one that refer to the most for both reference and entertainment. Mortimer has spent a lot of time and effort to compile this collection of historical quotes and verses.

Rating:
Summary: Stuffy and Shrill
Review: The Oxford Book of Villains is a collection of excerpts from books purporting to deal with villains of all kinds. I had hoped to find help as to how to write evil. But if the Book has any raison d'etre above venerating old classics, its merely discouraging readers from a life of crime and heresy.

Perhaps the Oxford Book of Villains is aiming for some sort of purpose or mood, and I've missed it. I tend to give anything that so much effort has been put into the benefit of the doubt. It desperately needs that doubt in order for me to see even a flicker of imagination in its careful categorization of The Spirit of Evil, Master Crooks, Minor Crooks, Murderers...
In each case, the book maintains a shocked, Victorian distance from the subject matter, and lingers on each text only long enough to persuade the reader that indeed, the subject is very naughty and deserves jail.