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

Search ISBN:0802715354 offer from Abebooks or used books from Alibris. The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective Reference Book. Classifications : General Biographies & Memoirs Subjects Books General England Europe History Subjects Books Expeditions & Discoveries World History Subjects Books General World History Subjects Books Reference Mystery . Click the following link to view the cover of The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective.

1) Hardcover Book The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Walker & Company. I have to say this is one of the more interesting true crime stories I have read. Ms. Summerscale has done an impeccable job researching the Saville Kent murder mystery, as well as the evolution of detecting, detective novels, and the effects it all had on Victorian England.

The story is a sad one: Saville Kent, the young son (I believe he was 3) of a middle class family was murdered in 1860 in England. It appeared as though the murderer was an internal habitant of Road Hill House where the family and their servants resided. But who? In the privacy of a Victorian middle class home, who could have killed such a young boy?

The murder coincides with the emergence of the detective. Fiction is rampant with stories of genius sleuths that only engross the public in true crime.

These two events clash in a story that takes you through every nook and cranny of the case. And this may be the only problem: too much research and too much explanation tend to make parts difficult to get through. You are so tantalized that the extra details seem tedious as you, the reader, try to unravel the case.

But Summerscale does "solve" the mystery and even takes to the deaths of all the major parties involved.

Had she not added her thoughtful and though-provoking afterward, I would have given this book 3 stars. But she wallops her readers in the end with a profound note about her writing, the case, and our perceptions.

Brilliant research, wonderful writing, and an amazing criminal case at an interesting point in history makes this book fulfilling to read.

Recommended.¤

2) Hardcover Book The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Walker & Company. This is a well written book. I was surprised to find myself propelled forward throughout as it is a combination of the details of an historical event and yet is a mystery. I thought that the writer captured the life of the people and the beliefs of the time very well.
This is a good read¤

3) Hardcover Book The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Walker & Company. Using a sensational murder case as a magnifying glass, the author elegantly explores links between literature and society. The subtitle ought however, to be the making of the great detective genre. The case was certainly unthinkable: one summer night i 1860 a small boy is lifted from his bed, his throat slit, and his body dumped in the servants´ privy. All the evidence suggests the murderer is a member of the household. The Kent family was what we would call blended, children of two marriages living w/ the father and his second wife. But this blend was clearly lethal. The Kent murder was the O. J. Simpson murder of its day, and the case reverberated throughout Victorian society. The author tells a compelling tale, using the mystery-genre´s techniques of judicially parcelling out information. As w/ many mysteries, the middle of the book sags, but her conjectures at the end, supporting Detective Whicher´s initial conclusions, are undeniably convincing. This is a broad and imaginative book, well told. If nothing else, the photograph of the old lady who lived to be 100 will keep you going through the pages.¤

4) Hardcover Book The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Walker & Company. I only made it through the first half of this yawner. Given the subject matter and the author´s unquestionable dedication to her research, there is a good deal of potential in this book. Unfortunately, author´s proclivity for extraneous details and commentary makes the book darn near inpenetrable.

After slogging through many random and unrelated "nuggets", I finally put down the book in frustration after growing tired of the author´s habit of inserting quotes from famous ficticious detectives as if they were real authorities on the subject, and providing these "insights" without much in the way of comment to make a point.

As a fan of books about similar subjects and the same era (The Alienist, The Angel of Darkness, Devil in the White City, Thunderstruck) I was hoping this would be another good read. As other reviewers have said, it is a good story let down by poor editing. I would recommend Caleb Carr or Erik Larson as better alternatives to Ms. Summerscale.¤

5) Hardcover Book The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Walker & Company. This book reads with the pace and thrill of a murder mystery, but every detail is real. A little boy, nearly four, had his throat slit and his body was tossed into the cistern of an outhouse on the grounds of his upscale family´s home in 1860. There are 12 people in the country manor at the time, some family members and others servants. Other hired hands live on the grounds, and everyone falls under suspicion eventually. To help you follow the clues, Summerscale gives a cast of characters, photos, a family tree, maps, diagrams, engravings, courtroom sketches, and so on. Enter Jack Whicher, one of Scotland Yard´s first eight detectives. After about five years as a constable in uniform on the beat, he now donned plain clothes and sometimes worked undercover. He had a great intuition about criminals and a marvelously meticulous method of investigating a crime, but such a detective was suspect in the England of his day. The upper classes considered him little more than the "hired help," quite beneath their station, and he was to be resented for the fact that his position allowed him to part the veil on personal affairs in that hush-hush era--even though they might greatly need his help, as in this case.

Jack was a real Sherlock Holmes, 27 years before the latter became known. But a few detective stories had been published by the time of the Road House murder, and the public expected a quick and brilliant discovery of the culprit. Yet crime scene investigation was very primitive in those days, and Whicher was not called into the case until two weeks after the murder. He did a masterful job of his investigation, developing a reasonable theory of the case, but he could not collect enough hard evidence to advance toward a conviction. Perhaps the author´s best feat in writing this book was that she was able to move beyond the whodunit and its characters, although both are skillfully portrayed, to give us a detailed feeling of that era. Who knew, for example, that an accused person was not allowed to speak at his or her own trial? Or that questions of modesty and propriety would muffle courtroom questioning to the point of making it useless? Summerscale skillfully blends such shocking revelations with quotidian detail, so that we get the full flavor of the times.

When the case went cold, Whicher retreated to London in disgrace. Because the Kent murder had such notoriety, his supposed "failure" went widely published in the newspapers. Less than four years after his debacle, he retired from the police force but lived on to see the murderer (in a surprise move) confess to the crime. Even after that denouement, Summerscale carries her book on further, letting us know what happened to all the major players in the end. This is a full meal, from start to finish. Her writing and research are superb, and the story is compelling. Who could ask for anything more?

¤

6) Hardcover Book The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Walker & Company.

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.

Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 4-Nov-2008, 08027153549780802715357, 730-290-650-950-420-890-940-540-8

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

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