A retired police constable has published Murder In Malta, his 11th book since he established himself as a leading crime historian and a national bestselling author.
Edward Attard, 62, began dabbling in the subject when he introduced an internal magazine to the police force and was soon put in charge of the corps' publications.
When he retired, he kept himself abreast with local and foreign crime and published two books about the police force, L-Istorja Tal-Pulizija Ta' Malta and Il-Pulizija F'Malta, and one book about the prison, L-Istorja Tal-Ħabsijiet F'Malta.
But the break in his career came with his publication of the first complete and categorised account of local murders over more than two centuries.
"Herbert Ganado wrote that it would be difficult to write about all the murders and harder to divide them into categories in his four part series Rajt Malta Tinbidel. And that's what I did in Delitti F'Malta," said Mr Attard.
Thousands of copies were sold, including the hardbound, which the publisher had originally been sceptical about. However, this would have not been possible without decades of tedious research.
"I found old files in the court archives but I could not access recent ones without the permission of the courts, so I had to turn to newspapers, some of which reported some murders in passing and not all the subsequent trials. Moreover, the government did not compile statistics in the past and when it started to, the figures were sometimes wrong."
Although the same happened with photographs, he still managed to collect countless photos of crime scenes, victims and murderers.
Mr Attard then published a sequel with murders that took place from the turn of the millennium. Once again, the book sold out and it was decided to combine the two books in a revised and updated edition.
In the meantime, his other publications included Il-Piena Kapitali, A History of the Malta Police Force, Assassinji Internazzjonali and Mintoff U De Gray, and the series Delitti Li Jibqgħu Jissemmew.
Since then, he also contributed to several radio and television programmes and edits the magazine Delitti U Misteri.
However, he has once again hit the bookstands with his 11th and latest book Murder In Malta.
As opposed to Delitti F'Malta, the book contains just those murders about which substantial information is available. The rest, which were not worth recounting alone, are just mentioned in passing.
Each account has also been updated with information received from the public and most of the mistakes in the previous book have been ironed out.
Moreover, the accounts are not divided into categories but listed in chronological order.
"In this book I wanted to give tribute to the judges, prosecutors and defence counsels."
The book also includes information about the criminal code, the judicial process and capital punishment.
Mr Attard intends to continue from where he left off with a sequel narrating the remaining murders in the near future.