Since 15th April 1933, the names of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow took on a whole new meaning. Instead of being portrayed through bland police mug-shots, the young couple aged just 22 and 24 kissing, hugging, posing with guns and in the stolen Ford Sedan which Clyde knew how to drive and which made the fastest getaway cars, the fashionably dressed young Bonnie is seen holding pistols, cigars and cigarettes. In different outfits and posed on different days in front of various stolen cars with switched number plates in relaxed photographs taken by their young friend W. D. Jones 'She kept on make-up and had her hair combed all the time... She was a tiny little thing. I reckon she never weighed more than 100lbs, even after a big meal.' Stick ups, shoot outs, robberies from gas stations and grocery stores, Bonnie and Clyde were the product of the Depression years when a crime wave, fuelled by Prohibition, gripped the United States. The Barrow Gang, whose hangers-on changed frequently, lived by robbing banks, stealing cars and Clyde personally participated in 10 of the 12 murders of which the gang is accused, and he most probably personally pulled the trigger on seven people. Once he had blood on his hands there was no going back, yet Clyde's miraculous escapes from police road-blocks and at least nine pitched gun-battles earned him a reputation of invincibility. Only through the betrayal of a former gang member were he and his lover Bonnie gunned down in a carefully staged ambush to bring to an end their two-year crime spree. This huge publication revisits the scenes of all their known and proven crimes across 500,000 miles of American Midwest and Southwest presented with this publisher?s usual 'Then and Now' format. 70 years on we picture the locations of the robberies and shoot outs and seek out the graves of those who died at the hands of the inseparable young lovers. We are taken from the Roaring Twenties and the first crimes in Denton Texas in 1929 right through to the ambush on May 23rd 1934 and the funerals. 304 huge pages, 30.5 x 21.6cm. Hundreds of photos on glossy paper.

An intelligent and perceptive word-picture of the lives of early criminals, written by a former police officer fascinated by historical stories of murder and justice. She studies nine historic crimes - and one familiar obsession. Murder truly was most foul in early modern Britain. Pamphlets littered the streets titillating audiences with exceedingly gruesome tales. Trials were gossipy events packed to the rafters with noisome spectators. Executions were public proceedings which promised not only gore, but desperate confessions and the grandest, most righteous human drama. The book unfolds true stories of murder, criminal investigation, early forensic techniques and high court trials pieced together from original research using coroner's inquests, court records, parish archives, letters, diaries and the cheap street pamphlets that proliferated to satisfy a voracious public. The historical laws and attitudes may strike us as exceptionally cruel, yet many aspects of public reaction to the criminal justice system have remained unchanged. We are still fascinated by narratives of murder and true crime, and trials continue to be grand public spectacles. Chapters include The Trial of Spencer Cowper, The Mutilation of Francis Marshall, The Bloody Midwife of Poplar and The Honourable Drowning of John Temple. 296pp.