49 books like Forensic Medicine and Death Investigation in Medieval England

By Sara M. Butler,

Here are 49 books that Forensic Medicine and Death Investigation in Medieval England fans have personally recommended if you like Forensic Medicine and Death Investigation in Medieval England. Shepherd is a community of 10,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

Shepherd is reader supported. When you buy books, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Book cover of Sexual Forensics in Victorian and Edwardian England: Age, Crime and Consent in the Courts

Katherine D. Watson Author Of Medicine and Justice: Medico-Legal Practice in England and Wales, 1700-1914

From my list on the history of forensic medicine.

Why am I passionate about this?

I work on topics where medicine, crime, and the law intersect, aided by an undergraduate degree in chemistry and stimulated by my fascination with how criminal justice systems work. I have published on the history of poisoning, vitriol attacks, assault, child murder, and the role of scientific expertise in criminal investigations and trials, focusing on Britain since the seventeenth century. I’ve contributed to many TV documentaries over the years, and enjoy the opportunity to explain just why the history of crime is about so much more than individual criminals: it shows us how people in the past lived their lives and helps explain how we got where we are today.  


Katherine's book list on the history of forensic medicine

Katherine D. Watson Why did Katherine love this book?

This fascinating study shows that victim-blaming has a long history and doctors have been part of the problem, playing a significant role in constructing and reinforcing rape myths in the years 1850-1914. The unique focus on age, medical beliefs about puberty, and public concerns about sexual offences and working-class sexuality explains why even children under the legal age of consent might not be seen as sexually innocent. Medicine provided a scientific rationale for deeply entrenched and remarkably stable popular beliefs about ‘real rape’ and ‘victimhood’, contributing to the serious burden that female victims faced in court. 

By Victoria Bates,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Sexual Forensics in Victorian and Edwardian England as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Drawing on court records from London and the South West, Sexual Forensics in Victorian and Edwardian England explores medical roles in trials for sexual offences. Its focus on sexual maturity, a more flexible concept than the legal age of consent, enables histories of sexual crime to be seen in a new light.


Book cover of Mad-Doctors in the Dock: Defending the Diagnosis, 1760-1913

Katherine D. Watson Author Of Medicine and Justice: Medico-Legal Practice in England and Wales, 1700-1914

From my list on the history of forensic medicine.

Why am I passionate about this?

I work on topics where medicine, crime, and the law intersect, aided by an undergraduate degree in chemistry and stimulated by my fascination with how criminal justice systems work. I have published on the history of poisoning, vitriol attacks, assault, child murder, and the role of scientific expertise in criminal investigations and trials, focusing on Britain since the seventeenth century. I’ve contributed to many TV documentaries over the years, and enjoy the opportunity to explain just why the history of crime is about so much more than individual criminals: it shows us how people in the past lived their lives and helps explain how we got where we are today.  


Katherine's book list on the history of forensic medicine

Katherine D. Watson Why did Katherine love this book?

Based on the authentic voices of doctors, prisoners and legal personnel who appeared at London’s central criminal court, the Old Bailey, the book charts the development of forensic psychiatry as a field of medical expertise. Terms like melancholia, mania and delusion were so adaptable that they could be used to account for apparently motiveless crimes, including murder. Judges, juries, doctors and lawyers focused on establishing what a prisoner knew they were doing and would likely have believed about the outcome of the act, revealing the medico-legal foundations of the modern insanity defense.

By Joel Peter Eigen,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Mad-Doctors in the Dock as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Shortly before she pushed her infant daughter headfirst into a bucket of water and fastened the lid, Annie Cherry warmed the pail because, as she later explained to a police officer, "It would have been cruel to put her in cold water." Afterwards, this mother sat down and poured herself a cup of tea. At Cherry's trial at the Old Bailey in 1877, Henry Charlton Bastian, physician to the National Hospital for the Paralyzed and Epileptic, focused his testimony on her preternatural calm following the drowning. Like many other late Victorian medical men, Bastian believed that the mother's act and…


Book cover of Legal Medicine in History

Katherine D. Watson Author Of Medicine and Justice: Medico-Legal Practice in England and Wales, 1700-1914

From my list on the history of forensic medicine.

Why am I passionate about this?

I work on topics where medicine, crime, and the law intersect, aided by an undergraduate degree in chemistry and stimulated by my fascination with how criminal justice systems work. I have published on the history of poisoning, vitriol attacks, assault, child murder, and the role of scientific expertise in criminal investigations and trials, focusing on Britain since the seventeenth century. I’ve contributed to many TV documentaries over the years, and enjoy the opportunity to explain just why the history of crime is about so much more than individual criminals: it shows us how people in the past lived their lives and helps explain how we got where we are today.  


Katherine's book list on the history of forensic medicine

Katherine D. Watson Why did Katherine love this book?

Newcomers to the subject can turn to this indispensable collection of essays for an outstanding introduction to the key legal, institutional, and professional foundations of forensic medicine in Europe and the United States since the seventeenth century. Case studies of infanticide, the mentally ill, coroners’ inquests, and abortion show just how deeply embedded in social, political, and legal contexts forensic practices are, and highlight their power to inspire and shape socio-legal change. 

By Michael Clark (editor), Catherine Crawford (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Legal Medicine in History as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This collection of essays presents fresh interpretations of the growth of medico-legal ideas, institutions and practices in Britain, Europe and America over the past four hundred years. Based on a wealth of new research, it brings the historical study of legal medicine firmly into the realm of social history. Case studies of infanticide, abortion, coroners' inquests and criminal insanity show that legal medicine has often been the focus of social change and political controversy. The contributors also emphasise the formative influence of legal systems on medico-legal knowledge and practice. Legal Medicine in History enlarges our understanding of the public role…


Book cover of Murder and the Making of English CSI

Katherine D. Watson Author Of Medicine and Justice: Medico-Legal Practice in England and Wales, 1700-1914

From my list on the history of forensic medicine.

Why am I passionate about this?

I work on topics where medicine, crime, and the law intersect, aided by an undergraduate degree in chemistry and stimulated by my fascination with how criminal justice systems work. I have published on the history of poisoning, vitriol attacks, assault, child murder, and the role of scientific expertise in criminal investigations and trials, focusing on Britain since the seventeenth century. I’ve contributed to many TV documentaries over the years, and enjoy the opportunity to explain just why the history of crime is about so much more than individual criminals: it shows us how people in the past lived their lives and helps explain how we got where we are today.  


Katherine's book list on the history of forensic medicine

Katherine D. Watson Why did Katherine love this book?

This is an important resource for anyone interested in the history of twentieth-century forensic practice, because it explains the rise of forensic science as a discipline separate from forensic medicine. Forensic scientists, based in laboratories, analyse trace evidence found at crime scenes, while forensic pathologists focus on the dead body in the mortuary. An analysis of the 1953 serial murders committed by John Christie at his infamous London address, 10 Rillington Place, shows how murder investigations had by then become team efforts centred on the crime scene itself. 

By Ian Burney, Neil Pemberton,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Murder and the Making of English CSI as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Crime scene investigation-or CSI-has captured the modern imagination. On television screens and in newspapers, we follow the exploits of forensic officers wearing protective suits and working behind police tape to identify and secure physical evidence for laboratory analysis. But where did this ensemble of investigative specialists and scientific techniques come from? In Murder and the Making of English CSI, Ian Burney and Neil Pemberton tell the engrossing history of how, in the first half of the twentieth century, novel routines, regulations, and techniques-from chain-of-custody procedures to the analysis of hair, blood, and fiber-fundamentally transformed the processing of murder scenes. Focusing…


Book cover of Dying from Improvement: Inquests and Inquiries Into Indigenous Deaths in Custody

Valentina Capurri Author Of Not Good Enough for Canada: Canadian Public Discourse Around Issues of Inadmissibility for Potential Immigrants with Diseases And/Or Disabilities

From my list on belonging and exclusion in Canada.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a historian and a social geographer whose main interest is in examining why some of us are embraced (legally, politically, economically, culturally) by the society we live in while some others are excluded. Probably due to my status as someone who is an immigrant to Canada and also a person with a disability, the topic of belonging and exclusion fascinates me. 

Valentina's book list on belonging and exclusion in Canada

Valentina Capurri Why did Valentina love this book?

I was not born in Canada and I only arrived here in my early twenties without being aware of the colonial past or present of my new home. This study has helped me understand that portion of Canadian history and its present repercussions. Equally important, it has highlighted how Indigenous persons have and continue to be dehumanized, excluded and ‘othered’ across the country. 

By Sherene Razack,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Dying from Improvement as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

No matter where in Canada they occur, inquiries and inquests into untimely Indigenous deaths in state custody often tell the same story. Repeating details of fatty livers, mental illness, alcoholic belligerence, and a mysterious incapacity to cope with modern life, the legal proceedings declare that there are no villains here, only inevitable casualties of Indigenous life. But what about a sixty-seven-year-old man who dies in a hospital in police custody with a large, visible, purple boot print on his chest? Or a barely conscious, alcoholic older man, dropped off by police in a dark alley on a cold Vancouver night?…


Book cover of Kisscut

Thomas A. Burns Jr. Author Of Sister!

From my list on dark mysteries you should read with the lights on.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m not sure why the dark side of humanity has always fascinated me, as it does so many others. I’ve read mystery and horror stories ever since I was a young boy, gravitating to ever darker books as I aged. I’m a pantser—that means that I don’t totally know where a story is going when I start, so I discover it right along with the characters. I think evoking emotion is key to writing a riveting tale, so I try to imagine what my character is feeling as I chronicle their experience. Part of being able to do this well is reading other writers who can, such as the authors on this list.

Thomas' book list on dark mysteries you should read with the lights on

Thomas A. Burns Jr. Why did Thomas love this book?

Kisscut is the second book in Karen Slaughter’s Grant County series.

Slaughter’s books are dark, and this one is no exception. The darkness is magnified because I think her heroine, Dr. Sarah Linton, is an innocent at heart.

Even though Sarah, a pediatrician, doubles as the Grant County coroner, she tends to see the best in people until the worst appears before her in a way she can’t ignore.

After her ex-husband commits a necessary but appalling act, Sarah discovers a threat to the community’s children which she’s compelled to follow until its unspeakable end is revealed.

The depravity she uncovered haunted me long after I finished the book.

By Karin Slaughter,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Kisscut as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

When a teenage quarrel in the small town of Heartsdale explodes into a deadly shoot-out, Sara Linton -- paediatrician and medical examiner --finds herself entangled in a horrific tragedy. And what seems at first to be a terrible but individual catastrophe proves to have wider implications when the autopsy reveals evidence of long-term abuse and ritualistic self-mutilation.

Sara and police chief Jeffrey Tolliver start to investigate, but the children surrounding the victim close ranks. The families turn their backs. Then a young girl is abducted, and it becomes clear that the first death is linked to an even more brutal…


Book cover of How They Murdered Princess Diana: The Shocking Truth

Jeannette Hensby Author Of The Rotherham Trunk Murder: Uncovering an 80 Year Old Miscarriage of Justice

From my list on true murder junkies.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been fascinated by true murder cases ever since I started reading about them when I was sixteen years old. They draw on all your senses and emotions: your curiosity about the psychology behind the killer’s actions and your horror and sympathy for the victims, their families, and the families of the killers because they suffer too. As a writer I am particularly drawn to apparent miscarriages of justice and I think there must be a secret detective hidden deep in my soul because I love to delve and investigate these. I wrote my first book after retiring from my long career in Social Services and Mental Health Services. 

Jeannette's book list on true murder junkies

Jeannette Hensby Why did Jeannette love this book?

If you were an adult in August 1997 you will almost certainly remember exactly what you were doing when you first heard the news about the death of Princess Diana. I was in bed. My husband arrived home from his night shift at about 6 a.m., and climbing into bed he said “There’s been a terrible accident. Princess Diana is dead.” “Oh don’t be ridiculous.” I said, “She can’t be.” He switched on the television and we saw the first floral tribute being laid at the gates of Kensington Palace. It was true; the People’s Princess had been killed in a road accident in Paris by a drunk driver while being chased by the paparazzi. “Not so,” says the author. “She was murdered by the State.” Chilling!

By John Morgan,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked How They Murdered Princess Diana as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This explosive book blows the lid on one of the most shocking crimes of our modern era. But it does more than that. How They Murdered Princess Diana is the most complete evidence-based account of the assassination of Princess Diana yet written. It delivers on providing answers to many of the key questions surrounding the 1997 Paris crash that took the lives of Diana and her lover Dodi Fayed – Who did it? Why was Diana assassinated? How was it carried out? It also exposes the massive inter-governmental cover-up that has taken place throughout the 17 years since the deaths.…


Book cover of The Coroner's Lunch

P.L. Doss Author Of Enough Rope

From my list on forensic that are gruesome, but fascinating.

Why am I passionate about this?

Like Patrick in "Rubbernecker," I excelled at dissecting animals in high school and college biology labs. I was also preoccupied by death, specifically violent deaths, and the reasons why people did such horrible things. Perhaps it was because of the Perry Mason mysteries my father gave me when I had a bad case of insomnia at age thirteen. So when I saw my first autopsy while interning at the Fulton County ME's office in Atlanta during graduate school, I was riveted. And while I didn't become a pathologist, my career in the criminal justice field gave me a front-row seat to observe the sad, traumatic, and often violent ways in which disturbed individuals impact society.

P.L.'s book list on forensic that are gruesome, but fascinating

P.L. Doss Why did P.L. love this book?

And now for something completely different, set in the People's Republic of Laos in 1976.

Dr. Siri Paiboun, a former surgeon and socialist activist now old and disillusioned with the Communist Party, has become the country's only coroner. It's a job he hates, made worse by corrupt officials and a judge who tries to turn even blatant homicides into deaths from natural causes. And by the dead, who haunt his dreams. 

Aided only by his Thai nurse, Dtui, and his mentally-challenged morgue attendant, Geung, Siri must deal with the bodies of three men who weren't supposed to be found and the suspicious death of a senior official's wife. Both are political tightropes. As he teeters on them, Siri travels to an unfamiliar area where the people know him—but as the reincarnation of Yeh Ming, an ancient shaman.

Soon, he's having hallucinations that may, in fact, be very real. To save…

By Colin Cotterill,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked The Coroner's Lunch as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In Laos in the year 1976, the monarchy has been deposed, and the Communist Pathet Lao have taken over. Most of the educated class has fled, but Dr Siri Paiboun, a Paris-trained doctor remains. And so this 72-year-old physician is appointed state coroner, despite having no training, equipment, experience or even inclination for the job. But the job's not that bad and Siri quickly settles into a routine of studying outdated medical texts, scrounging scarce supplies, and circumnavigating bureaucratic red tape to arrive at justice. The fact that the recently departed are prone to pay Siri the odd, unwanted nocturnal…


Book cover of A Fatal Obsession

Susan Page Davis Author Of Blue Plate Special

From my list on cozy mysteries by contemporary authors.

Why am I passionate about this?

A good puzzle will draw me in every time, and I’ve always loved mysteries. When I was a kid, Trixie Belden was my favorite sleuth. In junior high, I tried my hand at writing a few mystery stories. I also discovered logic puzzles about this time. In a mystery, you have to locate the clues and put them together in a logical manner to solve the riddle. Now I’m the author of 100 published books. Many of them are mysteries, and most of the ones that aren’t have elements of mystery within the story. 

Susan's book list on cozy mysteries by contemporary authors

Susan Page Davis Why did Susan love this book?

The characters always pull me back for the next book in the series. Trudy Loveday is a WPC—Woman Police Constable—in the 1960s. She’s a young woman clawing her way up in a man’s world. Her favorite sidekick is Dr. Clement Ryder, the local coroner. He’s nearing retirement, and he has secrets he’d rather not reveal—like the reason he quit being a surgeon and signed on as coroner. Together these two solve murders faster than the local police detectives, inspiring jealousy and suspicion. Trudy and Clement make an ideal sleuthing team. I pre-order these books as soon as I learn there’s another one coming out, I love them so much.

By Faith Martin,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A Fatal Obsession as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'Absolutely loved it... The characters were some of the best I've read in a long time.' Angela Marsons, no. 1 bestselling author of the Kim Stone series

Oxford, 1960. Police constable Trudy Loveday is about to face her first murder case...

It's five years since twenty-one-year-old Gisela Fleet-Wright died. But when her former boyfriend is found brutally beaten to death the day after a mysterious note threatened his life, the case is reopened - and, to WPC Trudy Loveday's delight, she's sent to investigate alongside coroner Clement Ryder.

At first it's just a ploy by her senior officer, a man…


Book cover of A Quick Bite

S. G. Blinn Author Of Rebellion

From my list on rebellious characters with a villainous twist of fate.

Why am I passionate about this?

I write what I see. Dark Fantasy has been the escape I have needed my entire life. It helped me understand hard topics such as war, greed, and loss. Working through a character's struggles has saved me from the darkest parts of my mind and guided me to where I can love myself.

S. G.'s book list on rebellious characters with a villainous twist of fate

S. G. Blinn Why did S. G. love this book?

A world exists around us that we never knew existed. When all you want is to be accepted, it is hard to find love.

I found that two people can find love regardless of what creature bore them. Family may not always understand what you want, but as long as there is trust and a little bit of humor, anything is possible. 

By Lynsay Sands,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A Quick Bite as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

True love: good from the first bite ...

Etienne Argeneau can turn one human into a vampire in his lifetime - an honour his kind usually reserved for their life mates, to let their love life forever.

But it's all a bit more complicated than that. Rachel Garrett, a beautiful coroner, has just saved his life and now she's about to lose hers. Etienne has a choice: he can save her life in turn, and thus doom himself to an eternity alone, unable to create his own life mate. Or he can watch his saviour die in the name of…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in the bubonic plague, forensic science, and Laos?

10,000+ authors have recommended their favorite books and what they love about them. Browse their picks for the best books about the bubonic plague, forensic science, and Laos.

The Bubonic Plague Explore 14 books about the bubonic plague
Forensic Science Explore 30 books about forensic science
Laos Explore 15 books about Laos