The technique of judging a book by its cover gets a bad press, but in this case, it could save you a lot of time. Consider the blurb. It has only four sentences, and the first welcomes its own publication “at a time when violent crime is on the increase…”. Two sentences later, it concludes by reminding those with short-term memory problems that its publication is “ timely… in view of the increases in crime in recent years”. If this were a school essay, it would be covered in red ink. The whole book is in need of assertive editing.?

This is unfortunate, as some chapters are good and the blurb is correct in its assertion (sentence number 2) that it is “written by experts in their field”. However, most of the authors have written more elegantly elsewhere, and the discursive style calls to mind conference proceedings (or, at times, unfocused conversations in the conference bar). Several chapters suffer from a lack of self-criticism. The discussion of comorbidity is one of the least enlightening I have read (in a field where there is plenty of competition for that title). Add to these criticisms the fact that the book lacks a unifying theme, and you have a work that can safely be left on the shelf.