Four of the world's greatest murders took place within a square mile of Glasgow's city centre during the latter part of Queen Victoria's rein. These horrific murders were committed not in the East End as expected, but in the fashionable and respectable West End of Glasgow. Madeline Smith was accused and found not guilty of lacing her doomed lover's late-night cocoa with arsenic; an eighty-three year old woman was brutally battered to death, and Jessie McPherson was brutally struck forty times with a meat cleaver, in a case considered by some authorities to be the finest in the world. However, by far the most chilling crimes are those of Dr Edward William Pritchard, "The Human Crocodile", who had the coffin lid unscrewed so that he could kiss the lips of the wife he had calculatingly murdered by slow poisoning. Glasgow is a city renowned for its crime and violence, but little has been documented about Victorian crime. This timely new edition of a classic best-seller, is the first of its kind, and is as valid today as ever.
After a chance skirmish with an armed killer in central London, agent John Mordred ends up in hospital, condition critical. Six weeks and a full recovery later, he’s persuaded it’s purely a police matter, so one he should forget about. But nothing in MI7 is ever that simple. There’s more to this particular incident than meets the eye and unnamed people in high places want it investigating. They believe Mordred’s the man for the job. Add to the mix five missing IMF officials, the kidnapping of a top British financier in Venezuela, evidence of a related cover-up in Whitehall, a young and unpredictable London Lord Mayor with acute delusions of grandeur, plus - most bizarrely - persistent rumours of local UFO sightings, and things threaten to spin radically out of control. Suddenly Mordred’s life is on the line again. This time, alongside those of innumerable others. And it’s him versus the clock.
"A mystery that touches the heart, with characters caught in a world that's harsh but trembles with tender emotions. A beautiful story." JAMES NAUGHTIE, BBC Radio 4 When the door opened and he came out, there came with him the stench of a dead thing, the sweet, sulphurous, warm, rotten chicken smell that only ever comes from unburied flesh. A dead body is found in a locked house. It has been stabbed in a frenzy, the hands and feet bound, the skull smashed, false teeth knocked from its jaws. Blood pools around the corpse and drips from the staircase. Yet nothing is missing: money and valuables remain untouched. Who could have murdered an old woman in such a horrifying way? And why? This is the mystery facing Sergeant John Fraser and Detective Lieutenant Trench when wealthy spinster Miss Jean Milne is murdered in the quiet seaside town of Broughty Ferry. Yet, despite an abundance of clues and apparent witnesses, the investigation proves troublesome: suspects are elusive and Miss Milne herself is found to be far from a model of propriety. And when sensational headlines put pressure on the police force to find a culprit, Fraser and Trench must work fast to prevent the wrong man from going to the gallows. But will they ever unravel the secret life and curious death of Miss Jean Milne? REVIEWS "Nicoll takes a true story and builds it into a twisting piece of prose with an unexpected shift towards the end." DAILY EXPRESS (****, Summer's Most Addictive Crime Fiction) "Beautifully Done." THE SUN "The sense of setting and era are spot on, and the dusky streets of Scotland are suitably spooky." HEAT MAGAZINE "A superb read, the sort of book that keeps you compulsively turning pages." UNDISCOVERED SCOTLAND "Nicoll offers a plausible, if shocking, solution to the crime at the end...in the style of the best Agatha Christie. The writing of a Christie-esque novel in the 21st century, however, requires a fresh and lively narrative, coupled with a wry and critical humour, to make it feel compellingly modern enough. Nicoll achieves that and more by bringing us, sometimes uncomfortably so, closer to our sins of the past." THE NATIONAL "An intelligent crime novel with secrets, passion and great characters - just a great murder mystery." PORTOBELLO BOOK BLOG "A triumph of tone, very moving, completely convincing." ANDREW MARR on The Good Mayor "An exuberant, whirlwind read, with a glint of steel beneath the frothy plot." THE GUARDIAN on The Good Mayor
As any police officer who has ever walked a beat or worked a crime scene knows, the street has its hot spots, patterns, and rhythms: drug dealers work their markets, prostitutes stroll their favorite corners, and burglars hit their favorite neighborhoods. But putting all the geographic information together in cases of serial violent crime (murder, rape, arson, bombing, and robbery) is highly challenging. Just ask the homicide detectives of the Los Angeles Police Department who hunted the Hillside Stranglers, or law enforcement officers in Louisiana who tracked the brutal South Side rapist. Geographic Profiling introduces and explains this cutting-edge investigative methodology in-depth. Used to analyze the locations of a connected series of crimes to determine the most likely area of offender residence, geographic profiling allows investigators and law enforcement officers to more effectively manage information and focus their investigations. This extensive and exhaustive work explains geographic profiling theories and principles, and includes an extensive review of the literature and research in the areas of criminal profiling, forensic behavioral science, serial violent crime, environmental criminology, and the geography of crime. For investigators and police officers deployed in the field, as well as criminal analysts, Geographic Profiling is a "must have" reference.
Computerized crime mapping or GIS in law enforcement agencies has experienced rapid growth, particularly since the mid 1990s. There has also been increasing interests in GIS analysis of crime from various academic fields including criminology, geography, urban planning, information science and others. Geographic Information Systems and Crime Analysis features a diverse array of GIS applications in crime analysis, from general issues such as GIS as a communication process and inter-jurisdictional data sharing to specific applications in tracking serial killers and predicting juvenile violence.
A unique study providing evidence that murder is predictable and the exceptionally high murder rate in the United States is reduceable. Part I examines 50 case histories and an analysis of 912 homicides from an original study made in Erie County (Buffalo), New York. Part II discusses multicide, serial killers, and mass murderers. Part III covers assassinations and executions and a final part presents conclusions.
The first death looked like a suicide. But someone had tucked a picture of an angel and a handful of white feathers into the banker's pocket before pushing him in front of a train. A killer is stalking The Square Mile—the financial district in London—an avenging angel intent on punishment. But why these victims? What were their sins? Psychologist Alice Quentin swore she'd never get involved with police work again. Her duty is to the living, not the dead. But she owes Detective Don Burns a favor. He was the one who would sit for hours when the last case they worked on together had landed her in the hospital. That case had clearly taken its toll on him, and his career, too. So when he comes begging for help, how can she refuse? In order to find the murderer, Alice and Detective Burns must dig deep into the toxic heart of one of the major financial centers in the world. A place where money means more than life, and no one can be counted innocent. A Killing of Angels is the second book in Kate Rhodes' Alice Quentin Series.
