An integral equation representation of cracks was presented, which differs from well-known "dislocation layer" representation. In this new representation, an integral equation representation of cracks was developed and coupled to the direct boundary-element method for treatment of cracks in plane finite bodies. The method was developed for in-plane (modes I and II) loadings only. In this paper, the method is formulated and applied to mode III problems involving smooth or kinked cracks in finite region. The results are compared to exact solutions where available and the method is shown to be very accurate despite of its simplicity.implicity.