About this book
What gives a cunning criminal away when living by their wits is no longer enough?
In Remarkable Rogues, Charles Kingston gathers true crime sketches of criminals, con artists, and murderers from Europe and America. Each chapter follows one person or one case, giving you a complete short narrative rather than a single long plot. Kingston brings his knowledge of crime and courts to stories of people whose cleverness serves dangerous ends.
The book moves from a gallery of rogues to swindlers who live on trust, then into darker accounts of murder and the slow work of detection. Kingston shows the tricks criminals use and the habits that give them away. His brisk, plain storytelling lets you follow each case while noticing the patterns behind these different criminal careers.
What you’ll discover
- A gallery of rogues Meet people who live by their wits and turn their intelligence toward crime.
- The workings of trust See how swindlers depend on a victim’s confidence rather than force.
- Darker turns into murder Follow grave cases where the focus shifts to the slow work of detection.
- Habits that betray Notice how the habits of cunning criminals can finally give them away.
- One case at a time Enjoy a complete short narrative whenever you want one sharply drawn criminal story.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Two women turn charm into poison
- Outlaw queen and the woman with fatal eyes
- Vanity and greed feed two swindlers
- Wartime greed and marriage dreams fund two frauds
- A buried widow and a false archduke
- False baronets and borrowed fortunes
- A ranch girl's fortune and a Christmas murder
- Poison and a tailor's careful lies
- Four rogues, from a duel to a diamond fortune
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- Audiobook
- 9 h 51 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
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- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Berüchtigte Schurken
A Russian countess, a Bremen poisoner and a fake archduke use charm as their weapon in twenty true crime tales.
Medium level5–10 hours to read25 languages
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In short
Meet the people who talk their way into fortunes and sometimes onto the gallows. Remarkable Rogues is a collection of twenty true crime stories by Charles Kingston, a British writer on crime who died in 1944.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Two women turn charm into poison
Marie Tarnowska is courted at sixteen by a prince, a baron and a count. She elopes with the count, learns he is a libertine, and Kingston says her sense of injustice starts her on the road to ruin. Men gather around her, and one of them takes his own life for love of her. She shrugs it off.
With a lawyer and a young tool, she plots against a wealthy count and sets up a will and an insurance policy in her favor. A court in Venice judges the three in 1910.
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What is Remarkable Rogues about?
Each chapter follows a criminal career, from a Russian countess to an outlaw queen and a master thief.
Who is Belle Star in Remarkable Rogues?
Belle Star is a female outlaw leader in Texas after the American Civil War. Raised in her father's gang, she takes command at eighteen and uses disguises, sharp shooting and daring raids to rule the district.
Are the stories in Remarkable Rogues true?
Kingston presents the chapters as real cases drawn from court records, police files and newspapers, set between 1750 and the First World War. He names real places, dates and trials, and he adds his own comments as a crime writer.
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