I picked this book up from my paperback book club and I think this might be the very first time I was disappointed. The Executioner Always Chops Twice seemed like it might be a quirky list of mishaps and goofs, but instead it was a pretty dry collection of whoopsies and gore.
Geoffrey Abbott knows his stuff - he is a former Yeoman Warder at the Tower of London. The problem is he reports in such a way that it becomes almost tedious to finish them all. There’s a ton of stories in here (I think 80 to 90, somewhere in there), some illustrations to help with the imagination, and plenty of gore to aid in the nastiness. Not only are there amusing last words and whoops I missed your necks accidents, there are pretty detailed accounts of how executions are performed. I think the real problem wasn’t a lack of interesting stories or last words, I think it’s that after 50 or so, it just gets to be a challenge to get through them all.
On an interesting side note, I had an up close look at a botched hanging last month when we stayed the night in a historic, haunted hotel in Clayton, New Mexico. The Eklund has photos of the whoopsie hanging of Black Jack Ketchum – you can see him caught, noose around his neck, on the platform, and beheaded because the noose was tied in one of the ways Mr. Abbott describes. It was a bit gruesome to see photos, but hey, I had to look.
I don’t know that I would recommend The Executioner Always Chops Twice to anyone looking for a laugh, but it can be darkly comedic for a while. It’s just that after about 30 examples, you get immune and it gets a bit depressing and then a bit boring.
Rating: 3 Purrs for lots of historical and background information but some hisses for needing some comic relief – off with its head with a flamingo croquet mallet
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