Urge to Kill: How Police Take Homicide from Case to Court by
Martin Edwards
pbk out October 02
(Writers Digest)
at £16.04
Would-be crime writers should give in to the urge to read this
book. It starts by looking at how murder is defined and briefly
delineates various types of murder such as the crime passionnel.
Later it looks at the officials involved in a crime - the
police, FBI, coroner and the criminal justice system. Urge To Kill also
overviews the forensic side of an investigation such as blood typing,
DNA profiling and fingerprinting plus there's a section explaining the
many crime abbreviations and a useful Further Reading list.
This large format book also offers one-page case studies of
many
notable murderers from John Wayne Gacy to the Yorkshire Ripper. Female
killers featured include Beverley Allitt, Tracie Andrews and Jean
Harris. A get-rid-of-the-wife Contract Killing, The Oklahoma Bomber and
Japanese Nerve Gas Cult are also overviewed.
Whilst reading this book I sometimes begrudged the size of the
photographs. Admittedly, they are beautifully done - but does a full
page picture of a killer add much to the would-be crime writers
understanding of criminality? Surely a quarter page picture would have
sufficed and allowed more room for the text. That said, the lavishness
of the illustrations makes it the ideal gift for a new scribe.
New scribes must avoid tabloid-like simplification if they want
to write realistically about crime. Thankfully, Martin Edwards avoids
such demonisation when he examines the Barry George case, writing that
`the absence of a comprehensible motive is a key feature of the
arguments of those who maintain that George was innocent and that his
conviction was a miscarriage of justice that has allowed the real
culprit to go free.'
This book is a colourful and eclectic introduction to true
crime. It would be particularly useful for new writers or for the
horror
or dark literary writer who wants to move into crime fiction. It'll
help
such writers visualise the different typologies of killers, their
motives and how the police attempt to track them down.
