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