Over one hundred real-life cases of murder and bizarre mysteries, including:
- The Christmas Apple: The story of a pioneering exercise in forensic odontology involving a half-eaten apple left behind in the Bloomsbury room of twenty-seven-year-old murder victim Harriet Buswell. Was the chaplain of the German brig 'Wangerland' guilty of killing her, despite his acquittal with a letter of apology from the prime minister, Gladstone, and compensation from the British public including a contribution from Queen Victoria.
- The Awful Advent of Bible John: The tale of a red-haired John, the dancing, Bible-quoting, psychopathic serial strangler who haunted Glasgow's Barrowland Ballroom, but has never been arrested.
- The Case of the Deadly Manchurian Partridges: The mystery of Lieutenant Chevis, who died after eating a dish of Manchurian partridges at his own dinner-table, and whose funeral was marked by a telegram bearing only the words, "Hooray, hooray, hooray".
- A Death in Broadmoor: A tale of suicide in the mental hospital for convicted criminals. Did John Berridge kill himself with cyanide smuggled in by the Russians, having spied for them at a British air base in Germany?
- A Grimm Christmas Tale of New York: The tale of the poisoner Henry Barnet, ex-member of the Knickerbocker Club, who attempted to kill its Athletic Direct with a Christmas gift of Bromo-seltzer laced with cyanide, having succeeded in killing a rival for the affections of Blanche Chesebrough in a similar way the previous year.
