Was he a sadistic mass killer who lured innocent people to their deaths, or a hero of German-occupied Paris who liquidated members of the Gestapo and helped persecuted Jews escape from tormented France? This was the question as one of the twentieth century's most sensational murder cases came to trial in Paris in 1946. Thomas Maeder meticulously reconstructs one of the most horrifying true stories in the annals of crime: the vile crimes themselves (presumably Dr. Petiot dismembered his victims, then buried them in a lime pit), an incisive psychological portrait of the doctor, and a re-creation of his Daumieresque trial, in which he was charged with luring twenty-seven people with the promise of escape, then murdering them for plunder. Just how the murders were committed was a secret Dr. Petiot took to his grave; why he committed them remains to this day a chilling mystery.