The Executioner Always Chops Twice

A quick book to read on an airplane when you want diversion but nothing to read that is in depth.

Because I'm fascinated by European history, I thought I'd read this book containing stories of the executions of Mary Queen of Scots, Anne Boleyn and various other notables.

Amid the gore, the author mixed facts with humor.

How can one describe thus book? A quick read. A horror fan's ultimate bathroom book. Definitely filled with schadenfreude, although the recent lethal injection mishaps are worse than those recounted in this book. If tales of people poorly hung, burnt at the stake, beheaded, etc. interest you, then this book is for you.

Geoffry Abbott is at it again, regaling the reader with lurid, gruesome stories to make their hair curl. Abbott delights in the grim and gory stories of the bloody and sometimes macbre events that were the final days of some high profile criminals. In this work he gets to include the grisly ends at their low water mark. These tales are of executions that did not go well. While they make for amusing reading at this safe distance, the reality was anything but.

It was quite gruesome and picturing the axe falling made it had for me to get through the book easily. I had to keep putting the book down and later pick it back up. Over all it was interesting in terms of the history aspect.