Amazon.ca
The concept of
le crime passionnel originated in France, where Article 324, line 2, of the penal code excuses a husband who kills his wife or her lover after discovering them
in flagrante delicto. (Never mind that a wife who discovers and kills her husband has no such protection under the law.) Although such a motive is a legal consideration only in France, crimes of love--"where passion drives one or more of the people involved first to a deadlock and then to a deadly conclusion"--are rarely treated as common homicides. "It isn't exactly murder, but it isn't manslaughter, either," writes Howard Engel in his morbidly fascinating history,
Crimes of Passion. The book explores the legends and legal cases of murderous love, spanning numerous centuries and countries including Canada, the United States, France, England, and New Zealand. It features such celebrated cases as Ruth Ellis (the last woman to hang in England), Jean Harris (who killed Dr. Tarnower, creator of the Scarsdale Medical Diet), Lizzie Borden, O.J. Simpson, Yvonne Chevalier (who killed her war-hero husband in Orleans, France), and Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters, among others. Engel takes a socio-historical approach to the material, offering readers not only the fascinating and strange details of these crimes, but an opportunity to consider how the study of a particular case allows us to examine the behaviour of the perpetrators and victims, and the psychology of the surrounding society as well. He seems to prove that, ultimately, crimes of passion cannot be pigeonholed; the best we can do to understand them is "to glimpse the passion that brought them about."
--Svenja Soldovieri
From Library Journal
Engel (Lord High Executioner: An Unashamed Look at Hangmen, Headsmen and Their Kind), who is also a mystery writer and winner of the Arthur Ellis Award for Crime Fiction, here presents a topic that comes straight from today's tabloid headlines but also crosses time. From the 1849 trial of Frederick and Marie Manning for the murder of Marie's lover, Patrick O'Connor, to O.J. Simpson's trial in 1994, Engel introduces the reader to the often-unresolved cases, and both the victims and the perpetrators, of what the French call le crime passionnel. Engel asks questions about the nature of this type of crime: Can it be premeditated? Can it involve revenge? Should it have a special place in legal codes (as is the case in France)? Thirty different cases from North America and Western Europe are included in this sampler, each with different outcomes, surprises, and reactions from the general public. A six-page bibliography of books, articles, and web sites is included. Recommended for public libraries with a clientele interested in true crime. Sarah Jent, Univ. of Louisville Lib.,
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
