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 | Kate Summerscale | The Suspicions of Mr Whicher

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	The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective Kate Summerscale Walker & Company, 2008 - 384 pages average customer review:based on 48 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

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.

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A Fabulous Read!

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?

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The Suspicions of Mr Whicher

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

An Elegant Overview

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.

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Well Presented and Paced

Like the mystery surrounding the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby or the death of Jon Benet Ramsey, the only way the guilty will every be known is if the confess. This murder in 1860 was like a locked room mystery. There was no way that an intruder could have gotten in without the help of some one inside. Even then it would have had to have been some one who knew the habits of the family and the layout of the building.

The murder of a four year old boy by one of his siblings or half-siblings or parent or servant was the only choice. Who among the fourteen people in the house that night could have done the deed? What makes this story so intriguing is that there are children of two marriages living in one house. The second wife was the governess for the children of the first wife. Was there duplicity between the siblings to one of the second wife's child?

With the use of information from both Scotland Yard, newspaper stories written at the time just after the murder, and books by some of those involved, there are a plethora of theories as to the perpertrator(s). That there was a confession, trial and convictions doesn't end the story. Lots of fun for the closet detective.

Zeb Kantrowitz

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