The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective
by Kate Summerscale

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective
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Book Summary Information

Author: Kate Summerscale
Edition: Hardcover
Published: 2008-04-15
ISBN: 0802715354
Number of pages: 384
Publisher: Walker & Company

Book Reviews of The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective

Book Review: Bloated
Summary: 2 Stars

Summerscale has interesting material, but sinks her work by throwing in much, too much superfluous detail and digression (Melville you're not). The book would have been very good if chopped by 50% or so, had she had a competent editor or seen to this herself. More importantly, it would have dramatically improved the clarity of presentation. Yes, by God, we get it, Constance is "stout" (in quotes over and over again). Also, you see, the public is fascinated by this new phenomenon, the detective (Summerscale provides numerous contemporary novel quotes, which are at best dimly illuminating and, taken in aggregate, annoyingly irrelevant). In addition, the brother William, whose role in the killing is poorly substantiated, is not so interesting a character, at least with regard to the case, to justify the volume of prose and photos.

The author tries to argue what a uniquely Victorian situation this was, when in fact deadly sibling rivalry is older than Cain and Abel. I will give her credit for delineating the creepy, calm, blank stillness of Constance. Also, the addition of a photograph (and these are quite well done) of a St. Paul's mosaic, which may or may not have been created by Constance, is indeed chilling.

Summary of The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective

The dramatic story of the real-life murder that inspired the birth of modern detective fiction.

In June of 1860 three-year-old Saville Kent was found at the bottom of an outdoor privy with his throat slit. The crime horrified all England and led to a national obsession with detection, ironically destroying, in the process, the career of perhaps the greatest detective in the land.

At the time, the detective was a relatively new invention; there were only eight detectives in all of England and rarely were they called out of London, but this crime was so shocking, as Kate Summerscale relates in her scintillating new book, that Scotland Yard sent its best man to investigate, Inspector Jonathan Whicher.

Whicher quickly believed the unbelievable—that someone within the family was responsible for the murder of young Saville Kent. Without sufficient evidence or a confession, though, his case was circumstantial and he returned to London a broken man. Though he would be vindicated five years later, the real legacy of Jonathan Whicher lives on in fiction: the tough, quirky, knowing, and all-seeing detective that we know and love today…from the cryptic Sgt. Cuff in Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone to Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade.

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher is a provocative work of nonfiction that reads like a Victorian thriller, and in it Kate Summerscale has fashioned a brilliant, multilayered narrative that is as cleverly constructed as it is beautifully written.

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