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: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-02-24
ISBN: 080271742X
Number of pages: 400
Publisher: Walker & Company

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

Book Review: Maybe I'm just a geek for detail, but this is the best true crime book I've ever read
Summary: 5 Stars

This is not a true "review," but I wanted to comment on the reasoning of the negative reviews below.

Uniformly, those disappointed in the book cite the "extraneous detail" from the author. They felt misled by the packaging and marketing of the book as a detective thriller. In that aspect, these readers are correct. On first sight of the cover, subtitle, blurb, reviews, this looks like a straight-up Victorian detective thriller.

But it is so much more than that. If you are looking for a modern, streamlined, James Patterson or even Eric Larson clone, you WILL be disappointed. It's not a beach or airport read. The book would be more accurately marketed as a thoughtful analysis, with scrupulous and wide-ranging research, of all the ramifications of the case -- sociological, literary, even philosophical. This was the first JonBenet Ramsey case and its echoes are still reverberating today.

Personally, I enjoyed each and every discursion from the narrow confines of the straight murder story. Other books have handled the crime itself, though this author even brings new and fascinating light to the "solution." I appreciated what the NYT reviewer perceptively noted: the author takes the trouble to teach us about the world in which the criminal acted, which is fundamental to detection. We need to know what acted on the criminal. As well, she shows us what effects the crime had on the world at large. Murder does not occur in a vacuum, and this is the problem with most detective fiction written as an isolated puzzle. The real world is not so neat and clean. Ultimately, this is the main point she makes: detection itself isolates and sanitizes the crime to the point where the humanity of the story, especially that of the victim, is lost.

Once upon a time, JonBenet Ramsey was a living, breathing little girl, an individual, not a symbol. Saville Kent (the victim in this story) likewise was once his own little person.

The book masterfully brings one to that conclusion without false sentiment, and the whirl of "extraneous" detail leading to that conclusion makes it all the more poignant.

Best true crime book I ever read precisely because of that unique sensitivity.

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

The national bestseller, now in paperback.

In June of 1860 three-year-old Saville Kent was found at the bottom of an outdoor privy with his throat slit. T he 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. I nspector Jonathan Whicher?s real legacy, however, lives on in fiction: the tough, quirky, all-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 reads like the best of Victorian thrillers, and has been nominated for the Samuel Johnson Prize in London.

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