CHRONICLE OF 20TH CENTURY MURDER

Hardback. The 20th century saw the rise of the motiveless murder and the serial killer; the development of forensic science and the use of DNA and psychological profiling as weapons against the killers; and the abolition of the death penalty. It was a century punctuated by cases which crime writers call classics and criminologists refer to as landmarks - cases which have endured in the minds of writers and social scientists but which have also entered popular mythology : Dr. Crippen, Bonnie and Clyde, the Yorkshire Ripper and Mad Charles Manson. Fully illustrated and vast in its scope, this book examines every major murder in the 20th century in the light of its investigative, forensic, social or legal significance. Here are the cases of James Hanratty, Dennis Nielsen the civil servant who 'killed for company'; Harry Thaw, the sadist whose defence for murder was 'the American right to defend the virtue of womanhood'; and Ruth Ellis, whose controversial hanging in 1955 hastened the abolition of the death penalty. A year-by-year overview. Illus., + Alphabetical Index of Cases. 316pp. lge. 8vo. h/back. Nr. F. in Vg. dw. which has creasing to lower edge of front cover. A heavy book which will require additional postage both domestic and overseas.