This short but extremely meaty book represents eleven lectures given to a lay audience by the Professor of Legal Medicine at the University of Zurich. It deals clearly and simply with the main and knowable facts relating to suicide: how it can be definitely recognized, difficulties in diagnosis, the legal and insurance aspects, and the facts that are revealed by comparative statistics, with cautions as to the use of this method of approach. There follows a discussion of the 'personality' of suicides: they are classified as psychotic, psychopathic and normal with special attention to suicide in the young. Considerable space is devoted to the description of preparations and means, including double and multiple suicides, and the final lecture gives autopsy findings. As far as the book goes it is substantial and authoritative. One misses any reference to psychoanalytic ideas. Ten 'on the spot' photographs worthy of the Grand Guignol theater and of our tabloids decorate the general sobriety of the narration.