Into Their Own Hands

Into Their Own Hands

From Booklist Beginning with a lengthy description of feuding neighbors who settle their differences with guns, Provost documents numerous violent, murderous revenge acts. Here is case after case of persons who avenge the death of loved ones by killing those who perpetrated the crime, of fired employees who murder their former bosses, and of battered women who stab, club, and shoot their mates. Each chapter is loosely concerned with a particular type of avenger and grabs attention by presenting a particularly provocative case history amid other less sensationalized ones gathered from interviews, media reports, and police and court documents. Although Provost attempts no analysis of the crimes or insight into cultural attitudes, his book is a frightening commentary on a violent society. Sue-Ellen Beauregard A collection of true stories of citizens who took the law into their own hands features the story of Bernhard Goetz, who shot four teenagers in a subway and the battered wife who hired a hitman to kill her husband. Original.