Book Review: D'Cruze, S., Walklate, S., & Pegg, S. (2006). Murder: Social and Historical Approaches to Understanding Murder and Murderers. Portland, OR: Willan. v pp., 178 pp

• Author: Matt DeLisi
• Published date: 01 June 2008
• Date: 01 June 2008
• DOI: 10.1177/1057567708319237
• Subject Matter: Articles

Book Reviews

D’Cruze, S., Walklate, S., & Pegg, S. (2006). Murder: Social and

Historical Approaches to Understanding Murder and

Murderers. Portland, OR: Willan. v pp., 178 pp.

DOI: 10.1177/1057567708319237

Shandi D’Cruze, Sandra Walklate,and Samantha Pegg’s Murder: Social and Historical Approaches

to Understanding Murder and Murderers (hereafter referred to as Murder) is an interesting book that

takes academic criminology to task for long-ignoring murder and abdicating the study of murder to

journalists. Murder is a concise, 178-page book that uses historical and recent case studies and takes

a social constructionist perspective on the nature and extent of murder in England and Wales.

Murder is organized into seven chapters. Chapter 1 (titled “Cataloguing Murder”) describes the ways

that a homicide is catalogued as a murder. According to the authors,one must understand the motive for

the crime, the maleness of the act, the interpersonal nature of the relationship between murder offender

and victim, and the ways that gender, masculinity,and femininity are constructed vis-à-vis interpersonal

murders. Chapter 2 (titled “Devils and Demons”) explores the public fascination with murder and the

ways that cultural notions of evil are used to frame murderers as pathological others. The portrayal of

murderers as pathological others is at odds with the often banal circumstances that immediately precede

murders, such as interpersonal disputes. In addition, the authors touch on ways that female murderers

are historically framed as “mad” or “bad.” Chapter 3 (titled “Murderous Women”) focuses on ways that

women are portrayed as deviant murderers when they transgress traditional notions of femininity or

what they refer to as hegemonic masculinity. Chapter 4 (titled “Murderous Children”) explores incidents

of child-on-child killings and the ways that societal conceptions of childhood, the innocence of child-

hood exemplified by the doctrine of doli incapax (incapable of evil), and nascent forms of masculinity

and femininity are used to define and respond to these killings. Chapter 5 (titled “Murderous Men:

Intimate and Domestic Killings”) shows that portrayals of men who murder their spouses or intimate

partners as pathological or evil are “ideological moves” that obscure the power differentials that exist in

families. Chapter 6 (titled “Murderous Men: Killing Friends and Acquaintances”) explores male-on-male

murder and explains that this form of murder too is partially the result of the construction and embrace

of hegemonic masculinity. Chapter 7 (titled “Rendering Them Pathological”) summarizes the book and

its thesis. For the authors, the concept of hegemonic masculinity offers a useful starting point for under-

standing the ways that interpersonal murders in England and Wales unfold. This is in contrast to the

perennial attempts to portray murderers as pathological or evil, something that the authors report that

psychological explanations of murder still do.

There are some important contributions to be found in Murder. First and foremost, the authors

make a criminological contribution to the study of murder. It is a shame that on both sides of the

Atlantic there has been a tendency for the news media and the general public to study murder whereas

academics condescendingly understudy it, perhaps out of some belief that the concept is beneath

them. Instead, understanding murder should be at the top of the criminological list of areas of study.

Second, Murder highlights murder occurring in England and Wales which is interesting and probably

new information for American readers. For instance, the authors reported that only 858 murders

occurred in England and Wales in 2003-2004. In 2004 in the United States, there were 13,662 mur-

ders and nonnegligent manslaughters cleared by arrest—a 16-fold difference. Third, even if one is

not fond of social constructionist perspectives on crime, many elements of their thesis make sense.

When a woman murders, we immediately want to know her motives, her psychiatric history, whether

her children were the victims, whether she had been abused, whether she was a known criminal,

whether she was mad, bad, or a blend of both. When men murder, we often draw a distinction

between domestic disputes gone bad, bar fights gone bad, or other interpersonal disputes gone bad.

When children kill, our moral senses are outraged and we scramble for an explanation.

229

International Criminal

Justice Review

Volume 18 Number 2

June 2008 229-253

© 2008 Georgia State University

Research Foundation, Inc.

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