Hangman's Brae : True Crime and Punishment in Aberdeen and the North-East

Hangman's Brae is a vividly written account of the blood-curdling crimes and brutal forms of punishment of north-east Scotland.

The book explores the area's underworld and features the grave-robbers, jail-breakers, rioters and other lawbreakers whose crimes led them to premature deaths at the end of a rope or at the not so delicate hands of The Maiden, a gruesome decapitating device predating the French guillotine.

The stories of the men who enforced the law and meted out sentences to the ne'er-do-wells who broke it can be just as interesting and memorable as those of the criminals and Norman Adams introduces the reader to some of them.

Here you'll find some real characters such as the Aberdeenshire sheriff and criminal officer who always got his man - once spending two chilling nights chained to a brutal murderer and rapist. And it wasn't just hangings that these men had to perform - their grisly work also involved execution by beheading and drowning, often with some witch-burning for good measure.

The many true-crime cases in this book shed new light on just how violent and bloody the north-east of Scotland's past was.