The World's Worst Criminals: An A-Z of Evil Men and Women by Charlotte Greig

 The World's Worst Criminals: An A-Z of Evil Men and Women by Charlotte Greig is a book taking us on an adventure around the world discussing some of the evilest cases ever committed. This book is full of rapes, murders, bank robberies and criminal gangs and really touches on what makes someone become a criminal and commit a crime, let alone some of the worst crimes out there. This book features over 75 of the world's worst criminals making this a perfect book for anyone interested in crime and any students of law, criminology, psychology and even sociology.

I liked this book as it is full of interesting cases which you can read through just for personal pleasure or analyse and use each case for academic purposes whether that is writing an essay or analysing how different theories of criminality fit into different cases. It was really interesting to notice the similarities between different cases and even the differences between cases. It's very interesting how many of the cases featured in this book are rapes of females before the perpetrator murders these female victims. As a social scientist, I find this book really interesting to compare and analyse human behaviour in each case.

The one thing which was slightly disappointing in this book is how many of the cases are American. Yes, America may be geographically larger than many other areas of the world, but there are bound to be so many cases prior to 2017 when this edition of the book was published which were not all in America. Now there is nothing wrong with American cases, I just find many of them are so similar, especially in terms of the investigations and sentencing meaning it is easy to lose interest. At least when you are reading about cases all around the world you can really analyse similarities and differences in terms of the cases but also how different countries deal with these criminals, some of them are quite amusing, such as the case which embarrassed the French authorities. 

I started reading this book due to studying criminology alongside psychology and practising my application to criminal cases. My criminology course requires me to learn and analyse different criminological theories of crime including biological theories such as the XYY theory, Lombroso's theory and Sheldon's Somatotypes, psychological theories looking at cognitive, learning and psychodynamic approaches and sociological theories particularly functionalist, strain, realist and labelling theories. This book, therefore, provided great practice at applying my theoretical knowledge to these criminal cases and even enhanced my enjoyment. This was also the case from my learning of aggression in psychology and criminal profiling again in Criminology which all enhanced my enjoyment of this book. This is why I recommend this book to students of psychology, criminology, law, sociology and any of the social sciences as it is full of case studies which students can refer to. From an academic perspective, it would be nice to see a book similar to this but analysing each case and applying a number of legal, psychological, criminological and sociological theories.

Overall, I rate this book 4 stars as it is a good, interesting and informative book looking at a variety of criminal case studies many of which are the worst we have ever seen. I would recommend this book to any academics or anyone with an interest in crime. This is in no way a highly academic book not to be understood by those not taking advanced education, but a perfect introductory book into the world of criminology and the social sciences.