Shani D'Cruze – författare

This book seeks to unravel the issues associated with the crime of murder, providing a highly accessible account of the subject for people coming to it for the first time. It uses detailed case studies as a way of exemplifying and exploring more general questions of socio-cultural responses to murder and their explanation. It incorporates a historical perspective which both provides some fascinating examples from the past and enables readers to gain a vision of what has changed and what has remained the same within those socio-cultural responses to murder.

The book also embraces questions of race and gender, in particular cultural constructions of masculinity and femininity on the one hand, and the social processes of ''forgetting and remembering'' in the context of particular crimes on the other. Particular murders analysed included those of Myra Hindley, Harold Shipman and the Bulger murder.

This book seeks to unravel the issues associated with the crime of murder, providing a highly accessible account of the subject for people coming to it for the first time. It uses detailed case studies as a way of exemplifying and exploring more general questions of socio-cultural responses to murder and their explanation. It incorporates a historical perspective which both provides some fascinating examples from the past and enables readers to gain a vision of what has changed and what has remained the same within those socio-cultural responses to murder.

The book also embraces questions of race and gender, in particular cultural constructions of masculinity and femininity on the one hand, and the social processes of ''forgetting and remembering'' in the context of particular crimes on the other. Particular murders analysed included those of Myra Hindley, Harold Shipman and the Bulger murder.

The diverse violence of modern Britain is hardly new. The Britain of 1850 to 1950 was similarly afflicted. The book is divided into four parts. ''Getting Hurt'' which looks at everyday violence in the home (including a chapter on infanticide). ''Uses and Rejections'' two chapters on the use of violence within groups of men and women outside the home (for example, violence within youth gangs, and male violence centred around pubs). ''Going Public'' three chapters on how violence was regulated by law and the professional agencies which were set up to deal with it. ''Perceptions and Representations'' this final section looks at how violence was written about, using both fiction and non-fiction sources. Throughout the book the recurring themes of gender, class, continuity and change, public/private, and experience, discourses and representations are highlighted.

The diverse violence of modern Britain is hardly new. The Britain of 1850 to 1950 was similarly afflicted. The book is divided into four parts. ''Getting Hurt'' which looks at everyday violence in the home (including a chapter on infanticide). ''Uses and Rejections'' two chapters on the use of violence within groups of men and women outside the home (for example, violence within youth gangs, and male violence centred around pubs). ''Going Public'' three chapters on how violence was regulated by law and the professional agencies which were set up to deal with it. ''Perceptions and Representations'' this final section looks at how violence was written about, using both fiction and non-fiction sources. Throughout the book the recurring themes of gender, class, continuity and change, public/private, and experience, discourses and representations are highlighted.