Book Review - "The Fortean Times Book of Strange Deaths" (Magbooks / Fortean Times)

 

Gruesome and macabre, stupid deaths aren't just the subject of comedic skits on "Horrible Histories" - in fact Fortean Times - the go-to publication for the weird and wonderful across the world - still publishes newspaper clippings and stories from the internet about the many varied ways that people find (either by accident or design) to leave this mortal world behind. 

"The Fortean Times Book of Strange Deaths" came up in my library holds (oh thank GRUD for electronic lending in the current pandemic) and I've always liked weird and dark books like this. 

Helpfully divided up into common themes, "Strange Deaths" is a no-holds-barred tome filled with dark humour, and in some cases some quite tragic accounts where someone has lost their life through sheer coincidence rather than through their own stupidity or will. 

One section deals with factory accidents, a disturbing number of folk have drowned in giant vats of chocolate around the world - and as dreamy as this sounds, the rather gory tabloid descriptions (replicated word for word in this collected volume) make for some grim reading. Allegedly, liquid boiling hot chocolate is not a lovely way to go, being a bit like drowning in super-heated quicksand (and no, I doubt even the most ardent chocoholic could glug their way through 5000 gallons of chocolate quickly enough to save themselves). 

Another section deals with suicides, in particular the weirdly large number of folk who have constructed their own guillotines - some going into great detail with their handyman skills to produce a real working example of the death machine created by the French to dispatch the wealthy during the French Revolution. Some were building them to use on themselves, an equal number were killed accidentally when the thing got triggered prematurely. Decapitation, it seems, is also a popular method of suicide whether you have the skills to make a machine to do it - or just fancy driving down the road with a rope tied to your neck and this book spares no juicy detail in describing some pretty horrific scenarios. 

It's the sort of book that folk obsessed with stuff like the Black Museum (Scotland Yard's infamous grisly archive of murder-related items) might find interesting. I purely grabbed it because it's the sort of book I'd never purchase but have a weird interest in reading (not because I'm in any way morbid or weird, but definitely love books that help me understand the bizarre lengths humans will go to in order to achieve their aims, even if their aim is to eradicate themselves). 

One thing's for sure, I'm never eating Covent Garden Soup company soup after reading this one.