Blessin Adams

Blessin Adams is a British author and historian who brings the dark world of early modern English crime to vivid life. She began her career in the Norfolk Constabulary, investigating crime as a police officer, before moving into academia. She received her doctorate following research in early modern English law and literature at the University of East Anglia, where her work focused on how crime was investigated and understood between 1500 and 1700. Her book Great and Horrible News: Murder and Mayhem in Early Modern Britain reconstructs nine criminal cases from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries using coroners' inquest records, court documents, pamphlets, newspaper articles, parish archives, ballads, wills, letters, and diaries. The book argues that this period saw the emergence of secular, scientific approaches to criminal investigation, with increasing reliance on physical evidence — the distant origins of modern forensics. Adams' unique combination of practical policing experience and deep historical scholarship gives her writing both authority and accessibility. Her audiobooks and books offer listeners and readers true crime from an era when justice looked very different, revealing how early modern English society grappled with violence, morality, and the search for truth.