"Strange has not only offered a challenging, thoughtful, and often unsettling work, but has done so in a fashion solidifying her place as one of this nation's very best historians." --Jonathan Swainger, University of Northern British Columbia, Labour/Le Travail " The Death Penalty and Sex Murder in Canadian History adeptly conveys a fascinating aspect of Canadian criminal legal history. Carolyn Strange draws from an impressive range of archival sources to open up a line of sight into the complex interactions of culture, law, and politics that shaped Canadian responses to sex murders and capital punishment since the earliest years of the country." --Benjamin L. Berger, York Research Chair in Pluralism and Public Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University "Carolyn Strange has produced a gripping account of the tragic sex murder cases that dominated Canada's fierce debates over capital punishment and led 39 men to the gallows. 'A cautionary tale for today and the future,' it is an appalling history where race, ethnicity, class, and toxic masculinity never failed to intrude." --Constance Backhouse, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa "Strange masterfully recounts how the fates of the 61 convicted men she follows were both shaped by and shaped broad societal forces, such as public opinion and intolerance; judicial rigour and bias; sexological, psychiatric and penological expertise; social activism; bureaucratic process and moralizing; and political calculation and debate. Beyond the focus on sex murder, the book also provides an understanding of the history of capital punishment and its abolition more generally in Canada.

" --Donald Fyson, Département des sciences historiques, Université Laval.