A dirty bomb explodes amidst an anti-war protest in North London. Severe injuries, caused by toxic fumes from a uranic compound used in the bomb, put Britain's security services on high alert.Tara Drake is an attractive highly trained agent. She is promoted into a special unit of MI5's anti-terrorist branch. When suspicion falls on an extremist group called The Amama, Drake is assigned the job of helping her colleagues track down the mastermind behind the attack.Over 200 miles away in Cumbria, DI Dave Perry finally escapes his lethargy when a call takes him to a grisly crime scene in Glenmar Forest. The bizarre, brutal murder of a nuclear plant worker has no obvious motive. The only clue - writing on the soles of the victim's feet - steers Perry's investigation in two directions. Critised by his superior, Perry follows his intuition in a desperate search for answers.As more tragic events unfold, Perry is forced into a confrontation against a formidable foe and his fight for survival is played out to its shattering climax.

The felony murder doctrine is one of the most widely criticized features of American criminal law. Legal scholars almost unanimously condemn it as irrational, concluding that it imposes punishment without fault and presumes guilt without proof. Despite this, the law persists in almost every U.S. jurisdiction. Felony Murder is the first book on this controversial legal doctrine. It shows that felony murder liability rests on a simple and powerful idea: that the guilt incurred in attacking or endangering others depends on one's reasons for doing so. Inflicting harm is wrong, and doing so for a bad motive—such as robbery, rape, or arson—aggravates that wrong. In presenting this idea, Guyora Binder criticizes prevailing academic theories of criminal intent for trying to purge criminal law of moral judgment. Ultimately, Binder shows that felony murder law has been and should remain limited by its justifying aims.

Finalist for the 2022 Cheiron Book Prize​ An Organ of Murder explores the origins of both popular and elite theories of criminality in the nineteenth-century United States, focusing in particular on the influence of phrenology. In the United States, phrenology shaped the production of medico-legal knowledge around crime, the treatment of the criminal within prisons and in public discourse, and sociocultural expectations about the causes of crime. The criminal was phrenology’s ideal research and demonstration subject, and the courtroom and the prison were essential spaces for the staging of scientific expertise. In particular, phrenology constructed ways of looking as well as a language for identifying, understanding, and analyzing criminals and their actions. This work traces the long-lasting influence of phrenological visual culture and language in American culture, law, and medicine, as well as the practical uses of phrenology in courts, prisons, and daily life.

Demonstrates how social norms and beliefs influence the outcomes in certain criminal cases.

This collection of essays examines how college professors teach the genre of detective fiction and provides insight into how the reader may apply such strategies to his or her own courses. Multi-disciplinary in scope, the essays cover teaching in the areas of literature, law, history, sociology, anthropology, architecture, gender studies, cultural studies, and literary theory. Also included are sample syllabi, writing assignments, questions for further discussion, reading lists, and further aids for course instruction.

A critical care nurse marries his patient’s widow only to later poison her in this true crime story by the author of Stolen in the Night. A Woman with A Passion For Power . . . Kathy Marie Augustine was not out to make friends. In politics, she rose to the top by playing hardball—and pushing her way through the old boy’s network of the Nevada legislature, rising to the rank of State Controller. When she died, only a few people shed tears—including the man who killed her. A Killer with A Foolproof Plan . . . Chaz Higgs was a former body-builder turned intensive care nurse who saw wealthy, sexy Kathy Marie Augustine as his meal-ticket—until he couldn’t stomach her domineering personality any longer. When Chaz decided he’d had enough, he chose a poison that would leave no evidence behind. Murder Hidden in Plain Sight . . . The death of a nationally-known politician made headlines, but one slip of the tongue came to the attention of a determined Nevada detective. Now, true-crime master Gary C. King takes us into the extraordinary life and death of a famously ambitious woman politician, behind the scenes of the investigation that unearthed shocking secrets, and into the heart and mind of a man who nearly got away with the perfect crime . . . Includes Sixteen Pages of Revealing Photos

What can the killing of a transgender teen can teach us about the violence of misreading gender identity as sexual identity? The Life and Death of Latisha King examines a single incident, the shooting of 15-year-old Latisha King by 14-year-old Brian McInerney in their junior high school classroom in Oxnard, California in 2008. The press coverage of the shooting, as well as the criminal trial that followed, referred to Latisha, assigned male at birth, as Larry. Unpacking the consequences of representing the victim as Larry, a gay boy, instead of Latisha, a trans girl, Gayle Salamon draws on the resources of feminist phenomenology to analyze what happened in the school and at the trial that followed. In building on the phenomenological concepts of anonymity and comportment, Salamon considers how gender functions in the social world and the dangers of being denied anonymity as both a particularizing and dehumanizing act. Salamon offers close readings of the court transcript and the bodily gestures of the participants in the courtroom to illuminate the ways gender and race were both evoked in and expunged from the narrative of the killing. Across court documents and media coverage, Salamon sheds light on the relation between the speakable and unspeakable in the workings of the transphobic imaginary. Interdisciplinary in both scope and method, the book considers the violences visited upon gender-nonconforming bodies that are surveilled and othered, and the contemporary resonances of the Latisha King killing.

His perverted desire is to become the world’s most infamous murderer. A popular seaside resort becomes his stalking ground. When the bodies of young women are discovered mutilated, detectives begin their hunt for a deranged copycat killer. Private detective Jim Sheridan is pulled from the brink of retirement when he learns of his daughter’s brutal murder. When fellow investigators Carl Lewis and Becky Watts join forces with him, suspects begin to emerge. The focus of the investigation is derailed as Sheridan’s past comes back to haunt him. While the police follow traditional lines of enquiry in their search for a forensically aware criminal, Sheridan and Becky grapple with obscure clues gleaned from other sources. Piece by piece the clues start to make sense. As the police eventually close in on their prime suspect, Becky follows her intuition in an attempt to solve the mystery of the killer’s identity. And the nightmare begins . . . Book reviews online: PublishedBestsellers website.

The US Department of Justice's National Institute of Justice (NIJ) asked the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of The National Academies to conduct a workshop that would examine the interface of the medicolegal death investigation system and the criminal justice system. NIJ was particularly interested in a workshop in which speakers would highlight not only the status and needs of the medicolegal death investigation system as currently administered by medical examiners and coroners but also its potential to meet emerging issues facing contemporary society in America. Additionally, the workshop was to highlight priority areas for a potential IOM study on this topic. To achieve those goals, IOM constituted the Committee for the Workshop on the Medicolegal Death Investigation System, which developed a workshop that focused on the role of the medical examiner and coroner death investigation system and its promise for improving both the criminal justice system and the public health and health care systems, and their ability to respond to terrorist threats and events. Six panels were formed to highlight different aspects of the medicolegal death investigation system, including ways to improve it and expand it beyond its traditional response and meet growing demands and challenges. This report summarizes the Workshop presentations and discussions that followed them.

Truman Capote's compelling and harrowing account of the murder of the Clutter family and the subsequent trial and execution of the killers made a huge impact when first published in 1965, and continues to provoke controversy, find readers, and generate critical debate. This volume offers a rich range of perspectives on Capote's major work, exploring it as a "non-fiction novel" and as a "true crime" story, tracing its reception by reviewers, critics and the general public, discussing its impact on the real-life community and individuals it describes, and examining the crucial ethical, judicial and penal issues it raises.