he last resort of the desperate or a vile tool of the greedy. And a very strange obsession. But where did this fixation develop? And what does it tell us about ourselves?

Our fascination with crimes like these became a form of national entertainment, inspiring novels and plays, prose and paintings, poetry and true-crime journalism. At a point during the birth of the modern era, murder entered the popular psyche, and it's been a part of us ever since.

The Art of the English Murder is a unique exploration of the art of crime--and a riveting investigation into the English criminal soul by one of our finest historians.