Crime & criminology

Using a decade of activist research, this book offers a radical analysis of grassroots black resistance to policing in twenty-first-century Britain.

Much has been written about the brutal crimes of Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper. During the four decades of his imprisonment for the murder of thirteen women - before his death in November 2020 - scarcely a week went by without some mention of him in the British media. In any story featuri...

This is the story of the murder of a young woman called Lynette White in the Cardiff docklands on Valentine's Day 1988. It is also the story of the miscarriage of justice that came after, when three black men, 'the Cardiff Three', were wrongly convicted of her murder. It is a brutally frank tale ...

Six captivating true-crime stories, spanning Mark Bowden's long and illustrious career, cover a variety of crimes complicated by extraordinary circumstances. In 'The Case of the Vanishing Blonde', the veteran reporter revisits some of his most riveting stories and examines the effects of modern t...

What is it about killers, cults, and cannibals that capture our imaginations even as they terrify and disturb us? How do we carefully consume these cases and what can they teach us about what makes victims and their murderers our collective responsibility? This book rejects the outdated narrative...

In 1984, Jean Road, a 49-year-old mother of three, awakes at home in Bath, Somerset and wonders where her 17-year-old daughter Melanie can be. Her bed hasn't been slept in. Just then, Jean and her husband Tony hear someone shouting through a loudspeaker: 'Does anyone know Melanie?' Jean runs to t...

Very little shocks criminologist David Wilson, who has interviewed some of the world's most notorious serial killers; and yet this extraordinary murder in his sleepy hometown of Buckingham astounded him. Like a modern-day Harold Shipman, Field had abused his position of power to target the elderl...

Forensic psychologist Paul Britton asks himself four questions when he is faced with a crime scene: what happened? Who is the victim? How was it done? Why? Only when he has the answer to these questions can he address the fifth: who is responsible? An intensely private and unassuming man, Britton...

As any reader of murder mysteries can tell you, poison is one of the most enduring - and popular - weapons of choice for a scheming murderer. It can be slipped into a drink, smeared onto the tip of an arrow or the handle of a door, even filtered through the air we breathe. But how exactly do thes...

By detailing the inner workings of the Old Bailey and UK law, the author makes clear that each of us has a vested interest in what happens in the court room - especially when it comes to the death of a fellow human being. Any one of us could end up in the witness-box or even in the dock. And yet ...