Point Regarding Books The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective
| Title | : | The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective |
| Author | : | Kate Summerscale |
| Book Format | : | Hardcover |
| Book Edition | : | First Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 360 pages |
| Published | : | April 27th 2020 by Walker & Company |
| Categories | : | Nonfiction. History. Crime. True Crime. Mystery. Historical. Victorian |
Commentary To Books 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.
Details Books As The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective
| Original Title: | The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective |
| ISBN: | 0802715354 (ISBN13: 9780802715357) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Characters: | Constance Emilie Kent, Francis Savile Kent, Detective Jonathan Whicher |
| Setting: | Rode, Somerset, England,1860(United Kingdom) |
| Literary Awards: | Macavity Award Nominee for Best Nonfiction/Critical (2009), Anthony Award Nominee for Best Critical Nonfiction (2009), Agatha Award Nominee for Best Nonfiction (2008), Galaxy British Book Awards for Book of the Year (2009), Edgar Award Nominee for Best Fact Crime (2009) Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction (2008) |
Rating Regarding Books The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective
Ratings: 3.45 From 18085 Users | 1983 ReviewsWrite-Up Regarding Books The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective
There don't seem to be many glowing reviews of this book on Goodreads, which I can totally understand. Yes, Summerscale gives us way, way too much extra background information on everything, her attempt to connect Detective Whicher to every single literary detective that has ever been is weak at the best of times, and the book's content doesn't pack quite the sensational punch its title promises. Those are the book's flaws. I acknowledge their existence, and will now proceed to completelySuperb historical documentary of police detectivesThis is an amazing book. Rarely have I read a book which has been so meticulously researched. There is an unbelievable amount of detail about the origins of official police detective work, the personalities involved, the journalism of the mid-nineteenth century, the Kent family of Road, the famous and not-so-famous people of that time, and the continuing history of the characters involved into the twentieth century.So, if I think that this book's
This book really went beyond what I was expecting from it. Aside from re-telling the mystery of a 3 year old's murder, the author also delved into the life and thoughts of one of the first and greatest dectectives, Mr. Whicher. Since I had never heard of this detective or this murder before, it was shocking to realize how many famous books were so greatly influenced by the story. For instance, Dickens was highly interested in this case, and Lady Audley's Secret was quite heavily based upon the
3.5 stars!Considering I'm quite local to the area near where this happened in 1860, I had no idea about this shocking real-life murder until I found a copy of this book in a charity shop. A young three-year-old boy is found slain outside the family home and fingers get pointed around various occupants including the victim's older siblings and the servants. Although I liked how accurate the geography was, the pacing was very slow-going. Most of the characters I wasn't keen on, due to their
I'm so disappointed in this book. I happened upon it at the library and thought it looked fantastic. Who doesn't love a Victorian murder mystery? YET, it was much less riveting than my beloved Death at the Priory. It was impossible not to compare the two Victorian murders and Death at the Priory wins hands down. The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher was dry as dust and spent far too much time comparing the historical person, Mr. Whicher, with the development of the burgeoning genre of detective novels
To me this book reads like somebodys masters thesis that was expanded for publication the style is very dry, theres a compulsive need to share every single random detail of research, and a particular obsession with how much everyone paid for everything but its an interestingly idiosyncratic prism through which to look at the various hang-ups of Victorian society, in particular the glorification of Home and Family, and their terror of the increasing social mobility among the classes. It focuses
Like most people, I bought this book because I was intrigued by the true story of murder in a good Victorian family, and the detective mystery that followed. I didn't pay for 200 pages of what read like some friggin mediocre senior honors thesis. I don't care about how the murder turned up in Wiklie Collins, I don't care what Dickens thought about the crime, I don't care which novels it inspired. This book was just saturated with end-notes, footnotes, and quotes ... not that they were
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