Robert J. Hoshowsky admits to being slightly obsessed with Ronald Turpin and Arthur Lucas, the last two men hanged in Canada. In The Last to Die, Hoshowsky has reconstructed the lives and deaths of Turpin and Lucas, in the belief that the story of these two men is a critical one in the history of capital punishment and justice in this country. His interest in the subject may seem morbid to some – certainly, no gory details or pictures are spared here – but one cannot doubt the great pains he has taken to ensure their story gets told.

As in any good true-crime story, Turpin’s and Lucas’s lives are described from their childhoods, through their descent into crime, to their trials for murder. The two grew up in similar circumstances, with abusive or absent parents, and one senses the author’s sympathy for men whose senses of right and wrong never developed. We also learn about the lives and deaths of their victims: a police officer, a pimp, and a prostitute. No stone is left unturned in divulging all the facts of each case. Hoshowsky also gives us the political, social, and moral context of Canadian society in 1962.

Unfortunately, this meticulous recounting of events leads to the book’s major weakness. In an effort to remind the reader of the facts, information is repeated several times, leaving the book feeling padded. This impression is furthered by the extensive retelling of the story of a man who knew Turpin and Lucas in Toronto’s Don Jail, but whose narrative adds little to the author’s thesis.

In fact, by the end of the book, Hoshowsky fails to come full circle and explain why the fate of these two men is, in fact, crucial to Canadian legal history. And despite complaints in the introduction that their deaths passed unnoticed, the efforts of numerous parties to have the sentences overturned are recounted in detail at the end of the book, somewhat obscuring or contradicting the author’s message. The stories of Ronald Turpin and Arthur Lucas do make for compelling reading, but their significance to the debate over capital punishment remains a mystery.