Doctors Who Kill

Tony Barclay is a retired juvenile corrections probation officer and a
former public-health research associate at the University of Toronto.

Doctors Who Kill is a collection of columns Max Haines wrote for The
Toronto Sun. There are some 46 stories, set in the 19th and 20th
centuries, of physician–murderers from Canada, the United States,
Britain, and France. All of the cases generated considerable interest in
their time.

Haines writes in a racy, popular style—popular in the sense of being
not only readable but also cliché-ridden and often ungrammatical. The
author has a gift for heavy-handed sarcasm. For example, the physicians
are always referred to as “the good Doctor. ...” The centrepiece of
these stories is how the doctors used their medical skills to kill, not
cure.

Fans of Haines’s columns will undoubtedly enjoy these stories, as
will those who like to see doctors knocked off their pedestals.