Bozeman's work appeals to sociologists, criminologists, psychiatrists and forensic linguists. His thesis is three-fold: to explore emergent themes in suicides and murder confessions, to determine whether Durkheim's suicide typologies might also be applicable to homicide (heretofore untested), and to expand upon the "forces of production" and "forces of direction" in the stream analogy of overall violence to include the coincident rise of both forces in what the author refers to as the stream-flood analogy. Findings support the integrated approach to the study of suicide and homicide. The most exciting revelation in the book is that evidence of the value of Durkheim's suicide typologies were, in fact, present in the language of homicide offenders.