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 (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2009-02-24
ISBN: 080271742X
Number of pages: 400
Publisher: Walker & Company
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Book Reviews of The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective

Book Review: Good read, but know what you're going to get before you buy it.
Summary: 4 Stars

I have to feel at least a little bit sorry for Kate Summerscale. She's written a book which is nearly guaranteed not to appeal to many likely to read it. She's written a true crime novel which relentlessly puts in lots of historical detail about the nature of the detective in Victorian culture. The reviews are full of baffled blood & gore and whodunnit aficionados.

Well, I for one liked it. The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher fits very well into my sweet spot between loving mysteries and loving historical analysis.

The murder at road hill house is an interesting case. Enough documentation exists about the people involved so that there is some real meat on the bones for the reader. I like detail. Summerscale obviously likes detail. If you're a potential reader who thinks detail gets in the way of the plot, this will probably not be the book for you. (Note: I don't mean gory details. There aren't actually all that many of those.)

One of the more interesting aspects of the book is the image of the detective in the consciousness of the time. I actually felt the detective thread was lost a little too much as the book went on-- I would have liked to see it strengthened, possibly with examples from other famous murder cases.

It isn't a perfect book. It started dragging a bit somewhere in the last few chapters. Not sure quite why. Pacing?

Anyhow. Some good things to know if you're contemplating buying The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher:

This isn't True Crime in its most popular sense. Think of this as an exploration of the perception of crime in the 19th century which happens to use a single crime as its focus.

Don't page through the photographs ahead of time if you want to be suprised about the bad guy! I always look through the photographs immediately, can't help myself. I didn't care that I was able to figure out the killer from the pictures, but you might.

Good reading.

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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