SPOTLIGHT: The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream: The Hunt for a Victorian Era Serial Killer by Dean Jobb

 I am very excited to be a part of the Blog Tour for The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream: The Hunt for a Victorian Era Serial Killer by Dean Jobb for a Spotlight Post! I received a free copy for honest review from the publisher. Thanks so much to Algonquin Books and Dean Jobb for letting me be a part of the tour. There is something that is just strange, yet fascinating at seeing what monsters some humans can be. I loved that this brought to attention a case I'd never heard of. Jobb did a great job of telling this tragedy of the past in a really interesting and readable way.

Title: The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream: The Hunt for a Victorian Era Serial Killer

Author: Dean Jobb

Published by: Algonquin Books

Released: July 13, 2021 (TODAY!!)

Source: Review Copy provided by Publisher

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Synopsis:  “When a doctor does go wrong he is the first of criminals,” Sherlock Holmes observed during one of his most baffling investigations. “He has nerve and he has knowledge.”

In the span of fifteen years, Dr. Thomas Neill Cream poisoned at least ten people in the United States, Britain, and Canada, a death toll with almost no precedents. Structured around Cream’s London murder trial in 1892, when he was finally brought to justice, The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream exposes the blind trust given to medical practitioners, as well as the flawed detection methods, bungled investigations, corrupt officials, and stifling morality of Victorian society that allowed Cream to prey on vulnerable and desperate women, many of whom had turned to him for medical help.

Dean Jobb vividly re-creates this largely forgotten historical account against the backdrop of the birth of modern policing and newly adopted forensic methods, though most police departments still scoffed at using science to solve crimes. But then most police departments could hardly imagine that serial killers existed—the term was unknown at the time. As the Chicago Tribune wrote then, Cream’s crimes marked the emergence of a new breed of killer, one who operated without motive or remorse, who “murdered simply for the sake of murder.” (Synopsis from Goodreads)

Dean Jobb is an award-winning author and journalist and a professor at the University of King’s College in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he teaches in the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction program. He is the author of eight previous books, including Empire of Deception, which the New York Times Book Review called “intoxicating and impressively researched” and the Chicago Writers Association named the Nonfiction Book of the Year. Jobb has written for major newspapers and magazines, including the Chicago Tribune, Toronto’s Globe and Mail, and the Irish Times. He writes a monthly true-crime column, “Stranger Than Fiction,” for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. His work as an investigative reporter has been nominated for Canada’s National Newspaper and National Magazine awards, and Jobb is a three-time winner of Atlantic Canada’s top journalism award.

Thanks so much for checking out my Blog Tour Stop for The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream: The Hunt for a Victorian Era Serial Killer by Dean Jobb. Thanks so much to Algonquin Books and Dean Jobb for letting me be a part of the Tour and giving me the chance to read this fascinating and creepy book. If you are oddly captivated by true crime, I'd definitely recommend giving this one a read.