Murder: The Biography

Murder: The Biography is a gruesome and utterly captivating portrait of the legal history of murder, featuring Richard Parker, Dr Percy Bateman, Ruth Ellis, and Archibald Kinloch. It explores the strange stories and mysterious cases that have contributed to UK murder law, such as big corporate killers, vengeful spouses, sloppy doctors, abused partners, and shoddy employers.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 320 pages
Publication date: 28 April 2022
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

Murder: The Biography is a gruesome and utterly captivating portrait of the legal history of murder. The stories and the people involved in the history of murder are stranger, darker, and more compulsive than any crime fiction. There's Richard Parker, the cannibalized cabin boy whose death at the hands of his hungry crewmates led the Victorian courts to decisively outlaw a defense of necessity to murder. Dr. Percy Bateman, the incompetent GP whose violent disregard for his patient changed the law on manslaughter. Ruth Ellis, the last woman hanged in England in the 1950s, played a crucial role in changes to the law around provocation in murder cases. And Archibald Kinloch, the deranged Scottish aristocrat whose fratricidal frenzy paved the way for the defense of diminished responsibility. These, and many more, are the people—victims, killers, lawyers, and judges—who unwittingly shaped the history of that most grisly and storied of laws.

Join lawyer and writer Kate Morgan on a dark and macabre journey as she explores the strange stories and mysterious cases that have contributed to UK murder law. The big corporate killers; the vengeful spouses; the sloppy doctors; the abused partners; the shoddy employers; each story a crime, and each crime a precedent that has contributed to the laws dark, murky, and, at times, shocking standing.

Weight: 264g
Dimension: 129 x 198 x 26 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780008407346