Evil Twins by John Glatt – Reviewed by Guy Portman
Evil Twins is a true crime book that spawned a television series of the same name on the ID channel. Divided into twelve sections, each dedicated to a different set of ‘evil’ twins, these shocking stories entail everything from madness to dual psychosis, murder and fratricide. Included are the famous London gangster twins, the Krays, as well as black widows, rohypnol Romeos and deranged doctors.
The book embraces a tabloid journalistic approach, complete with photographs and sensationalist section titles, such as The Twins From Hell and The Gift Of Death. The stories are short, easy to read overviews that utilise artistic license to create the crime setting. Whether in every instance one or both twins can be justly labelled as evil is a matter of conjecture. One pertinent example is The Silence Of The Twins chapter, which tells the tragic story of the Gibbons sisters. After being convicted for a series of relatively minor arson attacks, the twins, who were beset with complex issues, were sent to prison and then detained in Broadmoor mental hospital for eleven years. To classify either of these twins as evil seems to be overly simplistic. However the purpose of Evil Twins is sensationalism and it is effective in achieving this objective. Despite there being several typos in this reader’s copy, he would none the less recommend this book to all true crime aficionados.
