~ Standard Hardcover

Trials of Passion: Crimes Committed in the Name of Love and Madness

Using sensational crimes committed in America, Britain, and France, Trails of Passion is a dramatic narrative that takes madness and passion into the courts and puts these provocative themes on trial. 

With great storytelling flair and a wealth of historical detail, Lisa Appignansi teases out the vagaries of passion and their clashes with the law as sexual etiquette, class roles, attitudes to love, madness, gender, notions of respectability and honor, insanity and lunacy all come into play in that vital forum in which public opinion is shaped: the theater of the courtroom. 

“A keen, dense examination of crimes of passion.  Appignanesi patiently constructs a mosaic of law, psychology, and class strictures, producing more of a sweeping academic meditation than a true-crime narrative.  Trials of Passion will satisfy readers attuned to the juncture of history, psychology, and feminism.” -- Kirkus Reviews