In 1856 Dr William Palmer was convicted of poisoning his best friend with strychnine and was suspected of committing at least a dozen other murders. One of the last people to be publicly hanged in Britain, he was described by Charles Dickens as ‘the greatest villain who ever stood trial at the Old Bailey’. But in this fresh examination of the evidence, journalist Stephen Bates considers Palmer’s motivation and asks whether he really was a prolific and ruthless serial killer.

The Criminal Justice Act of 2003 allowed judges to sentence the perpetrators of particularly shocking crimes to a ‘whole life order’, with no chance of release. This book examines the lives of murderers currently serving these sentences in British prisons, such as Ian Huntley and Rose West. Debating the question of whether life really should mean life, the reports investigate each inmate’s motivations for committing their crimes as well as their subsequent attitudes to the offences and their imprisonment.

Anger, adultery and avarice lie behind the 20th-century cases featured here – one of which ended in the shortest murder trial on record (at just six minutes). The book explores the motivations of otherwise unremarkable people who were driven to kill; it also describes three brutal unsolved murders, and tells the story of one killer caught through the Crimewatch UK programme.

Who are the Mafia? Why are they so glamorized in popular culture? And how much damage do they really cause? The answers to these and other questions can be found in this lucid primer. Debunking the myths, it reveals the harsh realities of global organized crime from Russia to Mexico, and charts the trail of human misery and economic instability created by extortion, drug-running, money-laundering and human trafficking.

In judging ‘crimes of passion’, where should we draw the line between the ‘mad’ and the ‘bad’? This question featured prominently at several sensational trials between 1870 and 1914 as lawyers began to argue with psychiatrists over the inner lives of murderers. Focusing on three such trials in different countries, this book uses court and asylum records, letters and newspaper accounts to highlight the social debates prompted by the mind doctors’ new concepts of insanity.

In 1887, Elizabeth Berry, a young widow employed as a nurse at the Oldham workhouse, became notorious throughout the country, having murdered her own daughter; and there were suspicions surrounding another death – that of Elizabeth’s mother. Here, the celebrated crime author Bernard Taylor investigates the disturbing life of Elizabeth Berry and concludes that, although she was indicted for a single murder, she was in fact a cold-blooded serial killer.

The psychologist Dr Jessie Flynn is working to unlock the memories of a traumatized four-year-old; her former patient, Captain Ben Callan, is investigating the suspicious death of an officer in Afghanistan; but when a dead body washes up on a Sussex beach, their cases mysteriously converge.

The mystery surrounding Jack the Ripper's crimes has led to more than a century of obsessive theorizing about his identity. Now, indignant at Ripperologists' tendency to believe the 19th century's 'greatest liars', Bruce Robinson offers 'a repudiation of virtually everything' published on the subject; his lengthy but lively analysis of the evidence exposes a web of corruption and cover-up that helped the killer to escape. Felt-tip mark on lower trimmed edge.

Tales of crime-ridden slums and the activities of pickpockets, garotters, swindlers and pornographers loomed large in the minds of Victorian Londoners, and those aspects of the city's past continue to fascinate today's readers of historical fiction. Novelist Ross Gilfillan presents his research into the real-life stories of London's poorest and most desperate residents in the mid 19th century, and describes the authorities' changing approaches to the prevention and punishment of crime.

Whether anarchists, criminals, free thinkers or revolutionaries, outlaws hold a perennial fascination for the safe, law-abiding majority. Lavishly illustrated in colour and black and white, this book charts the exploits of forest outlaws from Robin Hood to Henry Thoreau; seafarers such as Francis Drake and the female pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read; sharpshooters such as Jesse James and Billy the Kid; and city hoodlums from Bonnie and Clyde to Jacques Mesrine.

Once the capital of Scotland, Stirling is an ancient city with a long and often bloodthirsty history, the dark streets of its Old Town providing a haven for ne'er-do-wells. Illustrated with a wide range of archive material, this book trawls though the town's grisly catalogue of fraud, robbery, assault and murder. Ten cases are examined in depth, while an appendix explores the work of the Circuit Court of Justiciary.

Identity theft and pyramid schemes seem very modern problems, but such scams rely on the same techniques that have been used by fraudsters throughout history to exploit their victims' greed, vanity or naivety. David Thomas has delved into the National Archives to uncover the stories behind a host of cons, forged documents and fraudulent beggars – as well as a 70-year spate of 'Spanish prisoner' letters, the Victorian ancestors of today's emails from Nigerian princes.

The Special Branch of the Metropolitan Police was originally formed to combat a campaign of Irish republican terrorism, but soon took on wider responsibility for the monitoring of anarchists, Bolsheviks and suffragettes. This book presents a complete history of the service until its 2006 merger with the Anti-Terrorist Branch. Combining documentary sources with recollections from their own former colleagues in Special Branch, the authors trace its distinguished history and describe many acts of bravery and high-risk intelligence-gathering.

A murder case usually excites public interest and when the crime takes place in a small community it is perhaps even more of a sensation. This true-crime selection recounts a number of interesting murders committed in Cornwall during the later 20th and early 21st centuries and includes some intriguing unsolved killings such as that of millionaire farmer Les Bate in 2002.

Created in 1850, Pinkerton's National Detective Agency used operatives renowned for their skills of subterfuge, infiltration and investigation – and none more so than James McParland, who even featured in a Sherlock Holmes story. This detailed but very readable biography from the author of Nimrod charts the famous cases of this real-life super-sleuth, including his infiltration of the Molly Maguires and his hunt for the Wild Bunch, and sheds new light on Pinkerton's cloak-and-dagger methods.

From solving grisly killings and foiling would-be pirates to talking suicidal Londoners down from Tower Bridge, the Thames River Police have always had a tough and varied range of duties. This book explores the history of the force from its foundation in 1798 by Patrick Colquhoun and John Harriott to today's hi-tech operations. Its grisly catalogue of shipwrecks, smuggling, ritual murder and organized crime sheds valuable light on a little-known aspect of the life of the metropolis.

At a time when most Londoners were pulling together in the face of terrible adversity, a criminal minority was taking advantage of blitz and blackout to rob and murder. Here, the renowned crime writer Simon Read paints a vivid picture of what life was like in 1940s London as he describes the crimes of the most notorious killers, among them the 'Blackout Ripper', the Elephant Boys, John 'Acid Bath' Haigh and the infamous Rillington Place murderer, John Christie.

Islington may now be one of the most fashionable areas of London, but it was once a dark and dangerous place. This absorbing book charts the many shocking crimes committed within its purlieus, and profiles their perpetrators: police killers Thomas Cooper and Ronald Marwood, the poisoner George Chapman, the child murderer Celestina Somner, and Kenneth Halliwell, who bludgeoned his lover, the playwright Joe Orton, to death on Noel Road.

From Newgate Prison to the West London flat where Lord Lucan murdered his nanny, this illustrated gazetteer lists the locations around the capital that have played host to notorious crimes such as the Christie and Crippen murders, arch villains such as the Richardsons or famous London crime-fighters. The book also includes comprehensive guided walks visiting sites associated with Sherlock Holmes, Jack the Ripper and the Krays.

Following the success of MGM's film adaptation of his novel The Thin Man in 1934, Dashiell Hammett wrote the two novellas published here as screen stories for sequels. After the Thin Man and Another Thin Man continue the exploits of ex- detective Nick Charles and his wife Nora, with knife-edge dialogue and hairpin plot twists. Edited, with introductions, by Richard Layman and Julie M Rivett.

The current wealth of the art market is making it more attractive than ever to thieves and unethical dealers. Illustrated with reproductions of missing works and drawing on the work of Julian Radcliffe of the Art Loss Register, this volume tells the stories of stolen paintings and artefacts ranging from Old Masters to Warhol screen prints and examines topics such as the looting of antiquities, Nazi art theft and the problems facing the art world today.

MJ Trow gives a fast-moving account of the Cato Street conspirators and the dark, radical intrigue that led them to the gallows outside Newgate Prison in May 1820.

Covering crimes ranging from killing newborns to parricide, this book chronicles the more gruesome aspects of Guildford's criminal history during the 19th and 20th centuries. It describes in detail each of 22 cases and the fates of both victims and perpetrators, with illustrations from contemporary reports and old and new photographs of the scenes of the crimes.

From a baby-eating pig in 14th century Oxford to Victorian murders, this book chronicles the more gruesome aspects of Oxfordshire's history. It describes in detail each of 27 cases and the fates of both victims and perpetrators, with illustrations from contemporary reports and old and new photographs of the scenes of the crimes.

From the burning of the Uxbridge Martyrs during the reign of Mary Tudor, to the suicide of a convicted murderer in 1981, this book chronicles the more gruesome aspects of Uxbridge's history. It describes in detail each of 22 cases and the fates of both victims and perpetrators, with illustrations from contemporary reports and old and new photographs of the scenes of the crimes.

From George Eagles, hanged, drawn and quartered in 1557, to the riddle of the Fingringhoe skeleton in 1937, this book chronicles the more gruesome aspects of Colchester's history. It describes in detail each of 16 cases and the fates of both victims and perpetrators, with illustrations from contemporary reports and old and new photographs of the scenes of the crimes.

After a brief history of the island, Glynis Cooper chronicles the more gruesome aspects of Jersey's history, from abduction and rape of its women in 1299 to the tragedies of the Nazi Occupation, 1940-45. The book describes in detail over 30 cases and the fates of both victims and perpetrators, with illustrations from contemporary reports and old and new photographs of the scenes of the crimes.

From the early 19th century to the 1950s, Jonathan Oates chronicles the more gruesome aspects of Richmond and Kingston's history. He describes in detail each of 20 cases and the fates of both victims and perpetrators, with illustrations from contemporary reports and old and new photographs of the scenes of the crimes.

Geoffrey Howse reveals the tragic and grisly details of sensational cases, from a judge killed on Primrose Hill in 1678 to 20th-century murders in Holloway, Finsbury Park and Camden.

As varied, enigmatic and unpredictable as the crime itself, this collection of 21 murder cases includes famous unsolved homicides such as the murder of Julia Wallace in Liverpool in 1931; particularly savage cases such as Buck Ruxton's killing of two women in Dumfriesshire in 1935; the first murderer convicted on fingerprint evidence; and a death sentence passed in 1992 – on the Isle of Man.

A reinvestigation into a series of unsolved murders from the 1870s and 1880s when dismembered corpses were discovered along the banks of the Thames, exploring the

From 1915, when William Birkitt killed the first of his three victims, to the trial and conviction of James Paton for his second murder in 2005, this book describes in detail 23 cases of multiple killers with Yorkshire associations. Some of the murders were committed in prison, while others – to the added distress of the victims' friends and family – were done following a convicted murderer's release.

The tradition of British detective fiction developed in parallel with the new Victorian police force as real-life murder cases inspired not only novels but also broadsides, waxworks, melodramas and puppet shows. In her exploration of a century of murder, Flanders uses the stories of the most notorious cases, from Burke and Hare to Jack the Ripper, to build up a picture of Victorian society and the evolving representations of crime and criminals in popular culture.

Intriguingly, Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy took office exactly 100 years apart, their killers were born 100 years apart and both were succeeded by men named Johnson. This guide to famous assassinations is full of such entertaining facts about notorious killings through the ages, from Julius Caesar to Alexander Litvinenko, taking in a number of interesting failed assassinations along the way, including Hitler, Napoleon and Charles de Gaulle.

Giving up her job as a junior reporter in favour of becoming secretary to pathologist Keith Simpson, Molly Lefebure spent the war years attending autopsies and crime scenes and consorting with policemen and criminal lawyers. Against the backdrop of the London blitz, this memoir, dramatized in the 2013 ITV drama of the same title, recounts the stories of dozens of mysteries and crimes unravelled by the work of forensic pathology.

From Newgate Prison to the West London flat where Lord Lucan murdered his children's nanny, this illustrated gazetteer lists the locations around the capital that have played host to notorious crimes such as the Christie and Crippen murders, arch-villains such as the Richardsons or famous London crime-fighters. The book also includes guided walks visiting sites associated with Sherlock Holmes, Jack the Ripper and the Krays. No jacket.

On 9 July 1864, Thomas Briggs boarded the 9.45pm from Fenchurch Street, bound for Chalk Farm. Ten minutes later at Hackney Wick, all that remained of Mr Briggs was a lot of blood, his empty leather bag and ivory-topped cane and somebody else's hat. It was Britain's first railway murder and the public were gripped by this 'terrible drama of real life'. Evoking its Victorian setting, this book is an enthralling retelling of the crime and the hunt for the killer. Previously in Postscript as Mr Briggs's Hat.

In 1869 two strangers shot dead a bank teller in Missouri, the first of a series of crimes that would create the legend of Frank and Jesse James, and the only one for which Jesse would be tried. Yet no record of the case was known - until, in 2007, attorney James Muehlberger unearthed the documents. His account reveals how the motive was not robbery, but revenge for an earlier killing during the Civil War.

This collection brings together the novel The Hound of the Baskervilles with six other tales, including The Creeping Man and The Devil's Foot, that share dark elements of the bizarre and supernatural.

The Victorian sleuth 'Paddington' Pollaky was a contradiction: a man of mystery who craved the limelight; a meddling busybody whose heart was in the right place. This first-ever biography investigates his involvement in the American Civil War, his campaign against sex trafficking and his dogged search for abducted children. It examines his methods – including placing cryptic messages in The Times – and considers whether he was the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot.

Doctor Crippen, Lord Haw-Haw, Fred and Rosemary West, the Kray Twins – this book tells the stories of modern British history's most notorious murderers, traitors, burglars and fraudsters. Its alphabetical listing includes further entries for unsolved mysteries such as Lord Lucan's disappearance and the Brighton Trunk Murders. On a happier note, the 20th century saw extraordinary advances in the fight against crime, so successful police officers, forensic scientists and lawyers also find a place here.

In their third adventure, Morley, Miriam and Sefton set off to the Lake District to continue researching for the Grand Project, The County Guides, only to encounter murder and mayhem on the Settle to Carlisle Line and a body in an archaeological dig.