The book explores the changing ways in which male-male sex and love have been perceived and experienced from the late Anglo-Saxon period to the present. Celebrated figures, such as Richard Lionheart, whose love for Philip Augustus of France was so well-documented, Oscar Wilde, subject of the most explosive scandal of the Victorian period, and Derek Jarman, the great artist and chronicler of the age of AIDS, are examined alongside little-known figures: Eleanor/John Rykener, a cross-dresser in Chaucer's England, the mollies of eighteenth-century London, the habituants of underground gay bars and cafes in 1930s Manchester and Brighton, and the newly-confident gays of contemporary Britain, who marry, adopt children and command the increasingly powerful 'pink pound'. Drawing on a fabulous wealth of research, the authors - each an expert in his field - have worked closely together to deliver a powerful, highly-readable and eye-opening history of love and desire between men in Britain. At a time when classic British crime fiction is enjoying greater popularity than ever (and television incarnations of such Brit classics as Sherlock Holmes and Jane Marple proliferate, along with more recent coppers such as the tough Inspector Rebus), innovative forms and styles are taking crime fiction in new directions. Writers of science fiction tailoring their cloth to a more profitable discipline have powered a growth in high-tech crime thrillers; women writers have tackled issues of violence and sexuality in breathtakingly direct ways. The encyclopedia covers all new developments, as well as examining traditional genres, such as espionage, historical crime, clerical crime, crime in academe, noir (and tartnoir), literary crime and true crime. The result is a synthesis of the scholarly and the lively - making this the perfect guide for those wanting reliable information or looking for stimulating analysis or interested in tips for great novels to put on their reading lists.

The book of Genesis records the fiery fate of Sodom and Gomorrah a storm of fire and brimstone was sent from heaven and, for the wickedness of the people, God destroyed the cities "and all the plains, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground." According to many Protestant theologians and commentators, one of the Sodomites' many crimes was homoerotic excess. In Visions of Sodom, H. G. Cocks examines the many different ways in which the story of Sodom's destruction provided a template for understanding homoerotic desire and behaviour in Britain between the Reformation and the nineteenth century. Sodom was not only a marker of sexual sins, but also the epitome of false usually Catholic religion, an exemplar of the iniquitous city, a foreshadowing of the world's fiery end, an epitome of divine and earthly punishment, and an actual place that could be searched for and discovered. Visions of Sodom investigates each of these ways of reading Sodom's annihilation in the three hundred years after the Reformation. The centrality of scripture to Protestant faith meant that Sodom's demise provided a powerful origin myth of homoerotic desire and sexual excess, one that persisted across centuries, and retains an apocalyptic echo in the religious fundamentalism of our own time.