I was optimistic when I picked up a copy of Anthony Poulton-Smith's Crime on the Canals, a recent publication from Pen & Sword, to read and review. Fresh in my memory was Kevin Turton's excellent Britain's Unsolved Murders, published the same year by Pen & Sword, and I was hoping for more in a similar vein.

But, while Poulton-Smith has some interesting stories to tell, he also has quite a few duds in this slim collection of brief police items (most of which are one or two pages in length, although a few are a bit longer). The book begins with the case of William Hancock, who in 1826 was convicted of stealing a couple bolts of cloth from a warehouse by the canal. Next, in 1833, a couple of gents robbed a drunk boatman of 8 shillings, 7 pence and a halfpenny. In 1838, a shawl and other items were stolen from a box being transported. In 1839, boatman Charles Clark was fined for forcing a donkey to do work more suited to a horse.

Sure, they're crimes, and they occurred in the vicinity of a canal -- but are they interesting reading? No, not really.

It isn't until chapter 6 that we arrive at an interesting case: the murder of Christina Collins in 1839, as she was traveling on the Trent and Mersey Canal from Liverpool to London. From here, the book picks up, with colorful cases of assault and murder mixed with more mundane crimes, but there's still too much of the petty in Poulton-Smith's reporting, such as the theft of a shilling's worth of coal or a rhubarb valued at sixpence.

If the author had focused on a more interesting collection of lawbreakers, I'd be more willing to give this book a high recommendation. Unfortunately, he padded the volume's scant 120 pages with way too much dull fluff.