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Title: Narcissistic Indulgences
Review: I think what irritates me the most about this book is Cornwell herself. She is not a forensic expert, not a psychologist specializing in abnormal or clinical pathological behavior, not a specialist of brain dysfunction, and not a historian, yet makes claims to all of the above in her audacious statement of having "solved" a hundred plus year old historic event. She handles history clumisly, ignoring context (e.g. suggesting fear of blood-borne pathogens, hardly a concern for the Victorian age), gives misleading neurologic information (cites frontal lobe deficit as tantamount to homicidal profile), and uses terms like "psychopath", couched in psychiatric jargon that is no longer current. What we have here is speculation, albeit interesting, with very little actual evidence. She is afterall a fiction writer. Perhaps she should stick to that.
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