Understanding Parricide provides a comprehensive and compelling treatment of this complex subject that could become the standard reference in the field. Nothing is lacking in its coverage and presentation of research conclusions about an array of topics, including child maltreatment, matricide, patricide, legal issues in defending, prosecuting, and punishing offenders, forensic assessment, treatment, risk assessment, and prevention. The reader will become acutely aware of the family, societal, and legal circumstances of parricide offenders. Special attention is given to the involvement of females in various types of parricides. DWC DivisioNews Book Reviews, Summer 2013 Kathleen Heide is an extraordinarily well-qualified person to write an excellent summary and evaluation of knowledge about parricide... In addition to being a distinguished researcher, she is a licensed mental health counselor in the state of Florida. She has engaged in countless forensic evaluations of killers, both for the prosecution and the defense, and she draws on this experience to provide in her current book an extraordinarily rich account of parricides and their outcomes in the legal system... Heide's volume is a masterpiece of epidemiological, clinical, forensic, and thoughtful policy analysis. I hope that it becomes a standard assignment in graduate schools of criminal justice and also for any mental health professionals wishing to understand and to work with parricides. Keith E. Davis for PsycCritiques, July 2013
