Lawrence and Comedy Book

This book has practically been my Bible for all three of my dissertations at BA, MA, and now PhD.
Faller has studied over 2,000 criminal biographies from the eighteenth century and has produced the definitive piece of historiography/literary criticism on the subject.
He begins with three case studies:
-highway robbery
-familial murder (fratricide/participle)
-murder
In the eighteenth century people held to a theological explanation of the causes of crime; anyone, of any social rank, was capable of committing a crime, because all men were guilty of original sin. Faller says that this is the reason that highwaymen were treated sympathetically in the press.
Where his narrative is a bit weaker is in his discussion of the functions of criminal biography; did people really read criminal biography because they harboured secret desires to commit similar crimes themſelves? I personally found it doubtful, and even Faller admits there is room for doubt on this subject, although that it no way detracts from his overall work.
All in all, a good read.