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The human race spends a disproportionate amount of attention, money, and expertise in solving, trying, and reporting homicides, as compared to other social problems. The public avidly consumes accounts of real-life homicide cases, and murder fiction is more popular still. Nevertheless, we have only the most rudimentary scientific understanding of who is likely to kill whom and why. Martin Daly and Margo Wilson apply contemporary evolutionary theory to analysis of human motives and perceptions of self-interest, considering where and why individual interests conflict, using well-documented murder cases.

This book attempts to understand normal social motives in murder as products of the process of evolution by natural selection. They note that the implications for psychology are many and profound, touching on such matters as parental affection and rejection, sibling rivalry, sex differences in interests and inclinations, social comparison and achievement motives, our sense of justice, lifespan developmental changes in attitudes, and the phenomenology of the self.

This is the first volume of its kind to analyze homicides in the light of a theory of interpersonal conflict. Before this study, no one had compared an observed distribution of victim-killer relationships to "expected" distribution, nor asked about the patterns of killer-victim age disparities in familial killings. This evolutionary psychological approach affords a deeper view and understanding of homicidal violence.

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CHOICE Review

Daly and Wilson (both McMaster University) have published numerous pieces of research, jointly and separately. In Homicide, they seek to shed some light on why people kill one another. As their extensive cross-cultural bibliography demonstrates, this question has stimulated a substantial amount of research over the years. The authors feel, however, that much of this research has not gone far enough in exploring the nature of the individual self-interests that explain the circumstances of personal conflict. They offer a perspective on homicide that they term ``evolutionary psychology,'' and demonstrate its value for understanding fatal interpersonal violence. This is a fact-filled book that makes use of many contemporary and historical research sources, both Western and non-Western. Daly and Wilson offer insight into topics ranging from infanticide, parricide, and disputes among acquaintances to blood revenge and machismo.-P. Horne, Mercer County Community College