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Editorial Review:
'A pacy analysis of a true British murder case from 1860, the unravelling of which involved one of the earliest Scotland Yard detectives and inspired sensation novelists such as Dickens and Wilkie Collins by exposing the dark secrets of the Victorian middle-class home. Absolutely riveting' Sarah Waters, GUARDIAN 'Vastly entertaining sly, delicate and probing' London Review of Books 'Sparse, melancholy, beautifully written the year's most beguiling biography' Independent 'A wonder of style, content and research' Time Out
A tour de force. It sweeps us irresistibly into the investigation, turning us into armchair detectives... Under the spell of [her] scrupulous intelligence and mesmerizing research'
Summerscale has produced not only a dazzling non-fiction thriller, but also an acute work of literary and social history.'
Summerscale has done excellent research in ferreting out the details of this curious case . . . a remarkable achievement.'
The Queen of Whale Cay was a Times number one bestseller. It has been optioned for film, and translation rights have been sold in several countries.For fans of Conan Doyle, Wilkie Collins and Agatha ChristieRights on Whicher have been sold in Spain, Russia, Germany, France, Italy and the USA
Very simply, this is a fantastic book, fantastically written and it's a book of deep moral purpose.
Just terrific... I thought there was a nimbleness to the writing. It's dense with detail but yet there is a lightness to it that is very unusual for even a very good detective story... One of the great things is it opens up a new door, you're looking into a life that is very accurately and richly described and you learn a lot about the period - you're in a very well-sailed boat.
What the book does brilliantly...is look at notions of class, criminality, human nature and religion in an age of change... engrossing.
'The best locked-room murder story you'll read all year. Bravo to Summerscale for breathing so much life into what could have been a dustily historical police procedural.'
It is a summer's night in 1860. In an elegant detached Georgian house in the village of Road, Wiltshire, all is quiet. Behind shuttered windows the Kent family lies sound asleep. At some point after midnight a dog barks.The family wakes the next morning to a horrific discovery: an unimaginably gruesome murder has taken place in their home. The household reverberates with shock, not least because the guilty party is surely still among them. Jack Whicher of Scotland Yard, the most celebrated detective of his day, reaches Road Hill House a fortnight later. He faces an unenviable task: to solve a case in which the grieving family are the suspects. The murder provokes national hysteria. The thought of what might be festering behind the closed doors of respectable middle-class homes - scheming servants, rebellious children, insanity, jealousy, loneliness and loathing - arouses fear and a kind of excitement. But when Whicher reaches his shocking conclusion there is uproar and bewilderment.A true story that inspired a generation of writers such as Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle, this has all the hallmarks of the classic murder mystery - a body; a detective; a country house steeped in secrets. In The Suspicions of Mr Whicher Kate Summerscale untangles the facts behind this notorious case, bringing it back to vivid, extraordinary life.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
If she'd only kept to the plot .... This book exists of three interwoven strands: a recounting of a murder, a social history of the period that the murder occured, and discussions of contemporary crime fiction. The first strand worked fine, and I appreciate the necessity of the second, but the detours into the contemporary crime fiction completely ruined the rhythm of the book for me. Where I had been hooked, I found my mind wandering, hoping the book would get back on track in as short a time as possible. The prose was also, at... more info
Gripping - for a while Initially, I loved this book. It was gripping, and Summerscale is a great storyteller, able to pack her narrative with detail without becoming tedious. But about halfway through it just ran out of steam for me. Having not been able to put it down, I suddenly did, and couldn't be bothered to pick it up again.
interesting, but not gripping enough for me... I found this book a bit of a chore, I'm afraid. It is very informative regarding the birth of the detective novel and the history of crime detection, but we know quite early on who the murderer is, so there is no suspense. Every page is littered with endless names of people and places, and I ended up flicking through pages to get on the with main business of the book. Very well written and researched, but not one for your holiday luggage!
Fascinating and truly gripping - if not quite perfect "The Suspicions of Mr Whicher" is a fascinating account of a Victorian murder mystery. I was not familiar with the Road Hill House murder case, but it appears to be well-known - which means I had a significant gap in my knowledge of British true crime stories. In 1860, the gruesome and tragic killing of a young boy, Saville Kent, at his countryside home and in the dead of night, gripped the nation, with everyone in Britain, it seems (including, for example, Charles Dickens) having their opinion as to who... more info
