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Title: The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective
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Manufacturer: Walker & Company
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| The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Walker & Company The Original Country House Mystery | In England in the early 1860s the detective, as profession and as fictional hero, was just coming into vogue. A series of sensational cases in the 1850s had captured the imagination of the British public, which, more literate than ever before, was enthralled by reports carried in an ever-increasing number of newspapers and magazines. Stories of fictional crime-solving heroics were provided by writers like Willkie Collins, further whetting the public appetite. Then, in the summer of 1860, a shocking murder took place. In a country house occupied by a wealthy family and its servants, a child was taken from its bed and brutally killed. Jonathan Whicher, one of the finest detectives of the day, was dispatched to solve the case. Mr. Whicher quickly narrowed his suspects down to one, and a huge furor broke out. Whicher was accused of jumping the gun, of publicity-seeking, and of an unseemly arrogance. His suspect was arrested, questioned, then released, and Whicher's career came to an end in disgrace shortly thereafter. Five years later, Whicher's suspect made a suprise confession, vindicating the detective after all.
Kate Summerscale has done a marvelous job of recapturing the world in which these events took place, especially in identifying elements of this true crime which influenced the writers of detective and mystery fiction over the next many years, so that the theme of a crime which takes place in an isolated location with a limited number of potential suspects remains a staple of the genre to this day. She traces the protagonists' lives far and wide and into some surprising places. Most interestingly, she points out the many inconsistencies in the final confession and indicates that there was probably much more to the story than was ever publicly told.
Mystery and true crime story fans will enjoy this book, as will historians, sociologists, and anyone who likes a good, solid conundrum. | | The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Walker & Company The Constance Kent Murder Case and Birth of the Enigma Novel | If you had asked me before I read this book if I knew anything about the murder of Francis Saville Kent, I would have blithely said that I knew all about it. After all I had read the Rhode book--The case of Constance Kent, (Famous trials series. General editor: George Dilnot), a famous cases anthology that contained a section on it and two novels that took the facts of the case as a jumping off place-- one by Francis King, ACT OF DARKNESS. which transposes the story to 1930's India, and won the Yorkshire Post Novel of the Year Award.
However, I had no idea about the effect that this murder had on the public-- well, they were said to be outraged, but no one mentioned people driving through the property like it was on a modern tour route of scenes of famous murders. Further, the public (including Charles Dickens) speculated about it like a group of people on a true crime newsgroup going over and over the murder of Jon Benet Ramey. Individuals would write at times libelous letters to the press and the police with their own theories about the identity of the murderer and how the murder was accomplished.
If there are some facts about the murder that I would have liked to have included-- if they exist, they relate only to the particular strain of "Detective Fever" that I suffer from and not because the author advances any particular theory as "the" theory of the case. While she does do some speculation based on a line in a letter that might have been written or dictated by a member of the family in 1926 and sent to Rhode after the publication of his book-- it seems a bit medically dubious. She also doesn't try to deal with the very puzzling evidence of the lack of blood splatter as well as the mysterious bloody shift found by the police. She isn't an advocate as much as a reporter of the effect this murder had on the society of the period.
Although she regards the case as mostly solved, I still feel that some of the statements she writes in her paragraphs on Dickens' last, unfinished novel, Bleak House, could apply as well to the murder of a 3 year old boy in 1860 at a place called Road-Hill House. | | The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Walker & Company Fascinating look at the birth of the detective | The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale is an indepth look at the beginnings of the detective in both police investigation and literature through a single case in England in 1860. A little boy's body is found slashed and thrown into a privy pit on his family's grounds, and everyone is suddenly a suspect. Inspector Jack Whicher is called in from Scotland Yard two weeks after the murder when the local constabulary is unable to come up with the name of the murderer. Whicher uses material evidence and listens closely to the statements of everyone involved to try and unravel the case. But when he arrests the 16 year old half-sister of the victim, the press and locals turn against him. Whicher, who was the inspiration for investigators by both Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens, had developed an excellent reputation for sussing out the truth, but this case essentially destroyed his career, and even the sister's subsequent confession didn't rehabilitate him. The book is excellently researched and written. Summerscale maintains taut suspense throughout and raises several questions about the truth of the confession. She also exposes how the police and detectives were viewed by the public: first as intriguing geniuses, later as nosey, low-class bumblers. Summerscale writes an terrific book about the birth of the detective and traces his early formation in literature and life.
| | The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Walker & Company The original English manor house murder mystery | | When I was young I used to read many mystery novels, and a lot of them originated in England. Invariably the murder was soved by the detective getting everyone together and revealing how the murder was done, and "who done it". It seemed that these were the only type of British mysteries being written, and I often wondered how this particular niche of the genre got started. This extremely well-written book has finally answered that question, and also tells an exciting true murder story. We get the origination of the detective in England, and also the origin of some of the words we see all the time in mysteries, such as "clue" or "sleuth". The detective has the facts of the murder, but couldn't prove it, and it destroyed his career in law enforcement. The solution only came several years later, and did not involve any police force. Even when the tale is almost done, the writer leaves us with the feeling that there was at least one other participant in the murder who was never brought to justice. Often life does not imitate art! This is an exciting book, and I highly recommend it. | | The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Walker & Company A great read! Fascinating... | | I first heard about the Francis Saville Kent murder from a segment in the 1940s movie Dead of Night. I didn't know it was grounded in reality until I read Victorian Murderesses by Mary Hartman (which I also recommend). The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher is well-written, all-encompassing--you get a great feel for the time period, literature, social mores, lifestyles, households, and other crimes--and at some point nail-bite inducing. I highly recommend the book. | | The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Walker & Company Product Description | 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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