Jo Turner – författare

Policing Women examines for the first time the changing historical landscape of women’s experiences of their contact with the official state police between 1800 and 1950 in the Western world.

Drawing on and going beyond existing knowledge about policing practices, the volume discusses how women encountered the official police, how they experienced that contact, and the outcomes of that contact in the modern Western world. In so doing, it is an original and much needed addition to the literature around changes in policing, women’s experiences of the criminal justice system, and women’s experiences of control and regulation. The chapters uncover such experiences in a range of countries across Europe, the USA, Canada, and Australia. Importantly, the collection focuses upon a crucial epoch in the history of policing – a 150-year period when policing was rapidly changing and being increasingly placed on a formal level. Bringing together scholarly work from expert contributors, this unique volume draws to the fore women’s experiences of policing.

It will be of great use to both scholars and students on undergraduate and postgraduate criminology and history courses, working on the history of crime, historical criminology, the history of criminal justice, and women’s history.

Policing Women examines for the first time the changing historical landscape of women’s experiences of their contact with the official state police between 1800 and 1950 in the Western world.

Drawing on and going beyond existing knowledge about policing practices, the volume discusses how women encountered the official police, how they experienced that contact, and the outcomes of that contact in the modern Western world. In so doing, it is an original and much needed addition to the literature around changes in policing, women’s experiences of the criminal justice system, and women’s experiences of control and regulation. The chapters uncover such experiences in a range of countries across Europe, the USA, Canada, and Australia. Importantly, the collection focuses upon a crucial epoch in the history of policing – a 150-year period when policing was rapidly changing and being increasingly placed on a formal level. Bringing together scholarly work from expert contributors, this unique volume draws to the fore women’s experiences of policing.

It will be of great use to both scholars and students on undergraduate and postgraduate criminology and history courses, working on the history of crime, historical criminology, the history of criminal justice, and women’s history.

In 1935, in sleepy Cannero on Lake Maggiore, Paola and her daughter Eva - Little Spark - ply a discreet living embroidering for rich tourists. Eva pines for the glamour of the Milan they abruptly left. She dreams of escape - to Hollywood to become a make-up artist, and from the inevitability of being married to a suitable local boy. Instead she is obliged to help the padre; slathering face paint on bodies from the lake. When an Englishman appears on her slab a sole strange mourner lurks in the shadows.

Eva turns for help to her charismatic new acquaintance, the globetrotting Agatha Christie-toting, puzzle-solving independent-spirited Amelia, and finds herself launched on a perilous journey that begins with her first trip across a lake she has hitherto feared and takes her into the dark heart of Mussolini''s brutal regime.

Little Spark will find that she is an extraordinary woman in extraordinary times.