Criminal Forensics

A brilliant, no-nonsense profile of the criminal mind, newly updated in 2022 to include the latest research, effective methods for dealing with hardened criminals, and an urgent call to rethink criminal justice from expert witness Stanton E. Samenow, Ph.D. “Utterly compelling reading, full of...

Brought to you by Penguin. Watch Will Trent now on Disney+ The sixth Will Trent novel, from the #1 bestselling author. A woman is found brutally murdered in a sordid Atlanta apartment. But there's something strange about this particular slaying. Her blood-soaked body bears a chilling similarity...

On October 20, 1973, in San Francisco, a White couple strolling down Telegraph Hill was set upon and butchered by four young Black men. Thus began a reign of terror that lasted six months and left 15 Whites dead and the entire city in a state of panic. The perpetrators wanted nothing less than a race war.

Lie detection, offender profiling, jury selection, insanity in the law, predicting the risk of re-offending, the minds of serial killers, and many other topics that fill news and fiction are all aspects of the rapidly developing area of scientific psychology broadly known as forensic psychology. This fascinating Very Short Introduction discusses all the aspects of psychology that are relevant to the legal and criminal process as a whole.

In recent history, planned violent attacks have persisted in the United States and abroad. These attacks have continued to illustrate the need for improved threat assessment and management efforts at local and national levels. In the few years since its publication in 2014, the International Handbook of Threat Assessment has become the gold standard textbook for the prevention of targeted violence. With this new edition, editors J. Reid Meloy and Jens Hoffmann have expanded their landmark text.

How do you deal with those that break the law? If their aim is to evade you, how do you identify them? If their aim is to lie, how do you interview them? If they don't see their actions are wrong, how do you help them to successfully reform? Criminal psychology is the discipline which tackles these challenges head on. From the signals which give away when we’re lying to the psychological profiling of violent offenders, this exhaustive guide, written by the UK’s top experts, is the perfect introduction.

Psychopathy is a personality disorder that has long captured the public imagination. Newspaper column inches have been devoted to murderers with psychopathic features, and we also encounter psychopaths in films and books. Individuals with psychopathy are characterized in particular by lack of empathy and guilt, manipulation of other people and, in the case of criminal psychopathy, premeditated violent behavior. They are dangerous and can incur immeasurable emotional, psychological, physical, and financial costs to their victims and their families.

Written by the forensic nurse who transformed the way the FBI profiles and catches serial killers, this thought-provoking book takes an intimate look at the creation of the Behavioral Science Unit–the inspiration for Hulu’s Mastermind documentary. In the 1970s, the FBI created the...

Through wonderfully descriptive writing, Simon details the work of fifteen detectives, three sergeants and a lieutenant charged with investigating dozens of Baltimore's 234 murders that year. Simon takes listeners inside the detectives' lives, describing the frustration of departmental red tape...

In his 26 years in the field, Richard Taylor has worked on well over a hundred murder cases, with victims and perpetrators from all walks of life. In this fascinating memoir, Taylor draws on some of the most tragic, horrific and illuminating of these cases - as well as dark secrets from his own family's past - to explore some of the questions he grapples with every day: why do people kill? Does committing a monstrous act make someone a monster? Could any of us, in the wrong circumstances, become a killer?

Serial killers: Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, and Jeffrey Dahmer are often the first names that spring to mind. Many people assume serial killers are primarily an American phenomenon that came about in the latter part of the 20th century. But such assumptions are far from the truth. Serial killers have been around for a very long time and can be found in every corner of the globe - and they're not just limited to the male gender either. Some of these predators have been caught and brought to justice whereas others have never been found, let alone identified.

Forensic Science Errors and Wrongful Convictions: Case Studies and Root Causes provides a rigorous and detailed examination of two key issues: the continuing problem of wrongful convictions and the role of forensic science in these miscarriages of justice.

The plea of insanity in criminal cases can be traced back at least to the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, which dates from 1755-1759 BC. It is a complicated defence, and its origins in modern law lie with the 'M'Naghten Rules' of 1843. Clearly a plea of insanity in murder cases is of critical importance when the death penalty is still applied, and even today it may still be the difference between a life sentence in a high-security prison, or an indeterminate one in a secure psychiatric hospital.

In this groundbreaking work of investigative journalism and true crime, Stacy Horn sheds light on how the subprime mortgage scandal of the 1970s and a long history of white-collar crime slowly devastated East New York, a Brooklyn neighborhood that would come to be known as the Killing Fields. On...

From CSI to Forensic Files to the celebrated reputation of the FBI crime lab, forensic scientists have long been mythologized in American popular culture as infallible crime solvers. Juries put their faith in “expert witnesses” and innocent people have been executed as a result. Innocent people are still on death row today, condemned by junk science.

“Thought-provoking true-crime thriller…the book raises urgent questions of balancing public and private good that we’ll likely be dealing with as long as the title implies.”—Wall Street Journal A relentless detective and a civilian genealogist solve a haunting cold case—and launch a...

INSTANT USA TODAY BESTSELLER! One of Amazon’s Best History Books of January Acclaimed journalist, podcaster, and true-crime historian Kate Winkler Dawson tells the true story of the scandalous murder investigation that became the inspiration for both Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter...

Svatí, špioni a sérioví vrazi Fascinující cesta do myšlení psychopatů. Psychopati bývají nebojácní, sebevědomí, okouzlující, bezohlední a soustředění na cíl, což jsou vlastnosti jak ušité na míru úspěchu v 21. století. Mají skvělé mimikry, takže odhalit jejich toxicitu není na první pohled jednoduché. A odpoutat se od nich je o to těžší. Známý oxfordský psycholog Kevin Dutton s pomocí nejnovějších metod zobrazování mozku a rozvíjejících se neurověd dokazuje, že ne všichni jsou ale nebezpeční. Na rozdíl od svých temných kolegů využívají totiž své schopnosti ve prospěch druhých a jsou užiteční.

EDGAR AWARD FINALIST “A true-crime masterpiece written by a cold-case-cracking master.”—John Douglas, New York Times bestselling co-author of Mindhunter “Barbara Rae-Venter isn’t just the genealogy expert who helped capture the Golden State Killer—she’s an unsung hero who has...

A killer so clever, nobody hears the screams . . . When the mutilated body of a woman is discovered in her home, DCI Bishop from the Met murder squad is called in to oversee the case. The horrific killing bears a striking resemblance to three other murders years before, but the cases were never...