Growing up in Glasgow in the 1930s, Roy Archibald Hall was a natural thief. After moving down to London, Hall who was bisexual became a familiar figure in the capital's glitzy, underground gay scene. Due to his lucrative criminal career, he led an extravagant lifestyle. Eventually the law caught up with him and he was arrested. He spent the majority of the next two decades of his life in a cell. Upon release from prison in 1975, he returned to Scotland and found employment with Lady Margaret Hudson, working as a butler at Kirleton House. David Wright, a former lover from his time in jail, arrived on the scene and was hired as a gamekeeper. The two men fell out over the theft of a diamond ring, and a vicious argument ensued. They went on a shooting trip to clear the air a walk from which Wright would never return. After the killing, Hall moved back to London, where he teamed up with small-time criminal Michael Kitto. Working again as a butler, he and Kitto then murdered Hall's new employers, an aged former Labour MP and his wife. But it did not end there by the time he was finally arrested, he had carried out two more brutal murders, including that of his own half-brother. Considering the nature of his crimes it was obvious that Hall would never be released. Before he died, however, he decided to set the record straight and write his memoirs. This honest, harrowing, and chilling book is the result."

Archibald Hall was one of Scotland's most enigmatic criminals. A man of multiple personae, Hall was more widely known as Roy Fontaine, the Monster Butler who murdered five people, including his own brother. After his convictions for murder in both Scotland and England in 1978, and with talk of a film of his life story, Hall took the opportunity to glamourise his past in books and magazines. What can be unravelled from his web of lies, though, is that he began the sinister transformation into Roy Fontaine, the gentleman butler - ready to seduce, steal and deceive - after effecting a more refined accent and studying etiquette and the aristocracy whilst serving his many jail terms. But how does a man go from thief to killer? Was he always destined to be an unfeeling, cold-blooded murderer? Or was he simply a desperate man obsessed with making a fortune by any means? And what could have influenced his bizarre outlook on life? These are the questions Allan Nicol examines in this illuminating new account of 'The Monster Butler'.