Here are 53 books that Forensic Medicine and Death Investigation in Medieval England fans have personally recommended if you like
Forensic Medicine and Death Investigation in Medieval England.
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I work on topics where medicine, crime, and the law intersect, aided by an undergraduate degree in chemistry and stimulated by my fascination with how criminal justice systems work. I have published on the history of poisoning, vitriol attacks, assault, child murder, and the role of scientific expertise in criminal investigations and trials, focusing on Britain since the seventeenth century. I’ve contributed to many TV documentaries over the years, and enjoy the opportunity to explain just why the history of crime is about so much more than individual criminals: it shows us how people in the past lived their lives and helps explain how we got where we are today.
This fascinating study shows that victim-blaming has a long history and doctors have been part of the problem, playing a significant role in constructing and reinforcing rape myths in the years 1850-1914. The unique focus on age, medical beliefs about puberty, and public concerns about sexual offences and working-class sexuality explains why even children under the legal age of consent might not be seen as sexually innocent. Medicine provided a scientific rationale for deeply entrenched and remarkably stable popular beliefs about ‘real rape’ and ‘victimhood’, contributing to the serious burden that female victims faced in court.
Drawing on court records from London and the South West, Sexual Forensics in Victorian and Edwardian England explores medical roles in trials for sexual offences. Its focus on sexual maturity, a more flexible concept than the legal age of consent, enables histories of sexual crime to be seen in a new light.
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I work on topics where medicine, crime, and the law intersect, aided by an undergraduate degree in chemistry and stimulated by my fascination with how criminal justice systems work. I have published on the history of poisoning, vitriol attacks, assault, child murder, and the role of scientific expertise in criminal investigations and trials, focusing on Britain since the seventeenth century. I’ve contributed to many TV documentaries over the years, and enjoy the opportunity to explain just why the history of crime is about so much more than individual criminals: it shows us how people in the past lived their lives and helps explain how we got where we are today.
Based on the authentic voices of doctors, prisoners and legal personnel who appeared at London’s central criminal court, the Old Bailey, the book charts the development of forensic psychiatry as a field of medical expertise. Terms like melancholia, mania and delusion were so adaptable that they could be used to account for apparently motiveless crimes, including murder. Judges, juries, doctors and lawyers focused on establishing what a prisoner knew they were doing and would likely have believed about the outcome of the act, revealing the medico-legal foundations of the modern insanity defense.
Shortly before she pushed her infant daughter headfirst into a bucket of water and fastened the lid, Annie Cherry warmed the pail because, as she later explained to a police officer, "It would have been cruel to put her in cold water." Afterwards, this mother sat down and poured herself a cup of tea. At Cherry's trial at the Old Bailey in 1877, Henry Charlton Bastian, physician to the National Hospital for the Paralyzed and Epileptic, focused his testimony on her preternatural calm following the drowning. Like many other late Victorian medical men, Bastian believed that the mother's act and…
I work on topics where medicine, crime, and the law intersect, aided by an undergraduate degree in chemistry and stimulated by my fascination with how criminal justice systems work. I have published on the history of poisoning, vitriol attacks, assault, child murder, and the role of scientific expertise in criminal investigations and trials, focusing on Britain since the seventeenth century. I’ve contributed to many TV documentaries over the years, and enjoy the opportunity to explain just why the history of crime is about so much more than individual criminals: it shows us how people in the past lived their lives and helps explain how we got where we are today.
Newcomers to the subject can turn to this indispensable collection of essays for an outstanding introduction to the key legal, institutional, and professional foundations of forensic medicine in Europe and the United States since the seventeenth century. Case studies of infanticide, the mentally ill, coroners’ inquests, and abortion show just how deeply embedded in social, political, and legal contexts forensic practices are, and highlight their power to inspire and shape socio-legal change.
This collection of essays presents fresh interpretations of the growth of medico-legal ideas, institutions and practices in Britain, Europe and America over the past four hundred years. Based on a wealth of new research, it brings the historical study of legal medicine firmly into the realm of social history. Case studies of infanticide, abortion, coroners' inquests and criminal insanity show that legal medicine has often been the focus of social change and political controversy. The contributors also emphasise the formative influence of legal systems on medico-legal knowledge and practice. Legal Medicine in History enlarges our understanding of the public role…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I work on topics where medicine, crime, and the law intersect, aided by an undergraduate degree in chemistry and stimulated by my fascination with how criminal justice systems work. I have published on the history of poisoning, vitriol attacks, assault, child murder, and the role of scientific expertise in criminal investigations and trials, focusing on Britain since the seventeenth century. I’ve contributed to many TV documentaries over the years, and enjoy the opportunity to explain just why the history of crime is about so much more than individual criminals: it shows us how people in the past lived their lives and helps explain how we got where we are today.
This is an important resource for anyone interested in the history of twentieth-century forensic practice, because it explains the rise of forensic science as a discipline separate from forensic medicine. Forensic scientists, based in laboratories, analyse trace evidence found at crime scenes, while forensic pathologists focus on the dead body in the mortuary. An analysis of the 1953 serial murders committed by John Christie at his infamous London address, 10 Rillington Place, shows how murder investigations had by then become team efforts centred on the crime scene itself.
Crime scene investigation-or CSI-has captured the modern imagination. On television screens and in newspapers, we follow the exploits of forensic officers wearing protective suits and working behind police tape to identify and secure physical evidence for laboratory analysis. But where did this ensemble of investigative specialists and scientific techniques come from? In Murder and the Making of English CSI, Ian Burney and Neil Pemberton tell the engrossing history of how, in the first half of the twentieth century, novel routines, regulations, and techniques-from chain-of-custody procedures to the analysis of hair, blood, and fiber-fundamentally transformed the processing of murder scenes. Focusing…
I’ve been fascinated by true murder cases ever since I started reading about them when I was sixteen years old. They draw on all your senses and emotions: your curiosity about the psychology behind the killer’s actions and your horror and sympathy for the victims, their families, and the families of the killers because they suffer too. As a writer I am particularly drawn to apparent miscarriages of justice and I think there must be a secret detective hidden deep in my soul because I love to delve and investigate these. I wrote my first book after retiring from my long career in Social Services and Mental Health Services.
If you were an adult in August 1997 you will almost certainly remember exactly what you were doing when you first heard the news about the death of Princess Diana. I was in bed. My husband arrived home from his night shift at about 6 a.m., and climbing into bed he said “There’s been a terrible accident. Princess Diana is dead.” “Oh don’t be ridiculous.” I said, “She can’t be.” He switched on the television and we saw the first floral tribute being laid at the gates of Kensington Palace. It was true; the People’s Princess had been killed in a road accident in Paris by a drunk driver while being chased by the paparazzi. “Not so,” says the author. “She was murdered by the State.” Chilling!
This explosive book blows the lid on one of the most shocking crimes of our modern era. But it does more than that. How They Murdered Princess Diana is the most complete evidence-based account of the assassination of Princess Diana yet written. It delivers on providing answers to many of the key questions surrounding the 1997 Paris crash that took the lives of Diana and her lover Dodi Fayed – Who did it? Why was Diana assassinated? How was it carried out? It also exposes the massive inter-governmental cover-up that has taken place throughout the 17 years since the deaths.…
Around age thirteen I discovered Perry Mason and put Nancy Drew on a back shelf. By the time I discovered Raymond Chandler’s mean streets, I was hooked. A vastly over-protected child, I longed to explore places that would make my mother faint. To paraphrase Chandler, I wanted to read about the best woman of her world and a good enough woman for any world. The kind of woman (or yes, a man) who would never ever need to be rescued. And when I sat down to write, I wanted to write about men and women who could handle themselves on those mean streets without turning mean themselves.
In recommending this book, I want to emphasize the word reluctant. Fenway Stevenson gets shanghaied into covering a friend’s butt by stepping in as coroner in a town in the California desert. She reminds me of Jason McCullough in Support Your Local Sheriff in that she constantly protests that the job is only temporary. She has every intention of going back to nursing school for her degree—right after she finds out what really happened to the body in her lab.
I couldn’t help rooting for her to discover her true vocation. Incidentally, for a male author writing a female protagonist, Ardoin does a fantastic job.
Blood is thicker than oil--until murder is involved. Fenway Stevenson doesn't want to return to the coastal town where her estranged father is practically king. But the death of her mother draws her back home--and the murder of the county coroner draws her into a deepening conspiracy. As the body count rises and all signs seem to point toward her father's oil company, will Fenway uncover the truth before family bonds become deadly?
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
My debut mystery novel takes place in Alaska, a setting I love and think has a distinct personality of its own. My historical novel in progress is set in Hawaii, where I grew up, and it reflects the particular diverse culture of this nostalgic venue. Another work-in-progress is set in post-apocalyptic Argentina–you can see the pattern here. Having a cast of interesting, believable characters is essential–but bringing them to life in compelling locales enriches and enlarges the story, in my mind. So many wonderful books skillfully fulfill these requirements–I hope you’ll agree these are among the best in the mystery genre!
I admit I’m old enough that memories of the post-Vietnam War era had begun to fade (mercifully?) until this book brought them back into sharp focus.
Vientiane, Laos, in 1976, after the Communist takeover, is so vividly portrayed–from the scent of the “Crow Shit blossoms” on the banks of the Mekhong to the inertia of the socialistic hierarchy, to the chicken counter spies turning their neighbors in for their capitalistic extravagances. And I found the 72-year-old Laotian coroner protagonist so endearing!
His cynical outlook and visitations from the dead make him a singularly sage and unconventional hero who can roll with the wildly absurd changes of the new regime.
In Laos in the year 1976, the monarchy has been deposed, and the Communist Pathet Lao have taken over. Most of the educated class has fled, but Dr Siri Paiboun, a Paris-trained doctor remains. And so this 72-year-old physician is appointed state coroner, despite having no training, equipment, experience or even inclination for the job. But the job's not that bad and Siri quickly settles into a routine of studying outdated medical texts, scrounging scarce supplies, and circumnavigating bureaucratic red tape to arrive at justice. The fact that the recently departed are prone to pay Siri the odd, unwanted nocturnal…
A good puzzle will draw me in every time, and I’ve always loved mysteries. When I was a kid, Trixie Belden was my favorite sleuth. In junior high, I tried my hand at writing a few mystery stories. I also discovered logic puzzles about this time. In a mystery, you have to locate the clues and put them together in a logical manner to solve the riddle. Now I’m the author of 100 published books. Many of them are mysteries, and most of the ones that aren’t have elements of mystery within the story.
The characters always
pull me back for the next book in the series. Trudy Loveday is a WPC—Woman
Police Constable—in the 1960s. She’s a young woman clawing her way up in a
man’s world. Her favorite sidekick is Dr. Clement Ryder, the local coroner. He’s
nearing retirement, and he has secrets he’d rather not reveal—like the reason
he quit being a surgeon and signed on as coroner. Together these two solve
murders faster than the local police detectives, inspiring jealousy and
suspicion. Trudy and Clement make an ideal sleuthing team. I pre-order these
books as soon as I learn there’s another one coming out, I love them so much.
'Absolutely loved it... The characters were some of the best I've read in a long time.' Angela Marsons, no. 1 bestselling author of the Kim Stone series
Oxford, 1960. Police constable Trudy Loveday is about to face her first murder case...
It's five years since twenty-one-year-old Gisela Fleet-Wright died. But when her former boyfriend is found brutally beaten to death the day after a mysterious note threatened his life, the case is reopened - and, to WPC Trudy Loveday's delight, she's sent to investigate alongside coroner Clement Ryder.
At first it's just a ploy by her senior officer, a man…
I’m not sure why the dark side of humanity has always fascinated me, as it does so many others. I’ve read mystery and horror stories ever since I was a young boy, gravitating to ever darker books as I aged. I’m a pantser—that means that I don’t totally know where a story is going when I start, so I discover it right along with the characters. I think evoking emotion is key to writing a riveting tale, so I try to imagine what my character is feeling as I chronicle their experience. Part of being able to do this well is reading other writers who can, such as the authors on this list.
Kisscut is the second book in Karen Slaughter’s Grant County series.
Slaughter’s books are dark, and this one is no exception. The darkness is magnified because I think her heroine, Dr. Sarah Linton, is an innocent at heart.
Even though Sarah, a pediatrician, doubles as the Grant County coroner, she tends to see the best in people until the worst appears before her in a way she can’t ignore.
After her ex-husband commits a necessary but appalling act, Sarah discovers a threat to the community’s children which she’s compelled to follow until its unspeakable end is revealed.
The depravity she uncovered haunted me long after I finished the book.
When a teenage quarrel in the small town of Heartsdale explodes into a deadly shoot-out, Sara Linton -- paediatrician and medical examiner --finds herself entangled in a horrific tragedy. And what seems at first to be a terrible but individual catastrophe proves to have wider implications when the autopsy reveals evidence of long-term abuse and ritualistic self-mutilation.
Sara and police chief Jeffrey Tolliver start to investigate, but the children surrounding the victim close ranks. The families turn their backs. Then a young girl is abducted, and it becomes clear that the first death is linked to an even more brutal…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
I am a historian and a social geographer whose main interest is in examining why some of us are embraced (legally, politically, economically, culturally) by the society we live in while some others are excluded. Probably due to my status as someone who is an immigrant to Canada and also a person with a disability, the topic of belonging and exclusion fascinates me.
I was not born in Canada and I only arrived here in my early twenties without being aware of the colonial past or present of my new home. This study has helped me understand that portion of Canadian history and its present repercussions. Equally important, it has highlighted how Indigenous persons have and continue to be dehumanized, excluded and ‘othered’ across the country.
No matter where in Canada they occur, inquiries and inquests into untimely Indigenous deaths in state custody often tell the same story. Repeating details of fatty livers, mental illness, alcoholic belligerence, and a mysterious incapacity to cope with modern life, the legal proceedings declare that there are no villains here, only inevitable casualties of Indigenous life. But what about a sixty-seven-year-old man who dies in a hospital in police custody with a large, visible, purple boot print on his chest? Or a barely conscious, alcoholic older man, dropped off by police in a dark alley on a cold Vancouver night?…
