Ebook The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective, by Kate Summerscale

Ebook The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective, by Kate Summerscale

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

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From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Summerscale (The Queen of Whale Cay) delivers a mesmerizing portrait of one of England's first detectives and the gruesome murder investigation that nearly destroyed him. In 1860, three-year-old Saville Kent was found murdered in the outdoor privy of his family's country estate. Local police scrambled for clues, but to no avail. Scotland Yard Det.-Insp. Jonathan Jack Whicher was called in and immediately suspected the unthinkable: someone in the Kent family killed Saville. Theories abounded as everyone from the nursemaid to Saville's father became a suspect. Whicher tirelessly pursued every lead and became convinced that Constance Kent, Saville's teenage half-sister, was the murderer, but with little evidence and no confession, the case went cold and Whicher returned to London, a broken man. Five years later, the killer came forward with a shocking account of the crime, leading to a sensational trial. Whicher is a fascinating hero, and readers will delight in following every lurid twist and turn in his investigation. (Apr.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Review

“The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective," by Kate Summerscale (Bloomsbury). In crime annals, it's right up there with the Lindbergh trial or the mystery surrounding JonBenet Ramsey: In 1860, one of Scotland Yard's finest was sent to solve the murder of a little boy at an upscale address near London. It turned out Jack Whicher's hunch was right, and his footwork fed the public imagination as well as writers such as Charles Dickens. Sadly, failure to clinch the case in court upended Whicher's career.” ―Margo Hammond and Ellen Heltzell, Minneapolis Star-Tribune“Takes you back to a specific place and time with all the imagination and skill of a top-tier historical novelist. You hang on every word, flipping pages faster than you can read them….If you like your murder mysteries wrapped up in a neat little package, this isn't the book for you. But if you're looking for a complex, intellectually stimulating thriller that will leave you breathless, well, this mystery is well worth inspecting.” ―Fairfield County Weekly“[A] fastidious reconstruction and expansive analysis of the Road Hill murder case…Summerscale smartly uses an energetic narrative voice and a suspenseful pace, among other novelistic devices, to make her factual material read with the urgency of a work of fiction. What she has constructed, specifically, is a traditional country-house mystery, more brutal than cozy, but presenting the same kind of intellectual puzzle as her fictional models and adorned, as such books once were, with wonderfully old-fashioned maps, diagrams, engravings, courtroom sketches and other illustrations…More important, Summerscale accomplishes what modern genre authors hardly bother to do anymore, which is to use a murder investigation as a portal to a wider world. When put in historical context, every aspect of this case tells us something about mid-Victorian society…The author's startling final twist both vindicates her fallen hero and advances an ‘aggressive' attack on moral hypocrisy in his day and ours.” ―Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review“Reads like a modern crime novel, filled with intriguing tidbits about the beginnings of criminal detection and the modern mystery crime novel.” ―K. Sue Collins, The Tampa Tribune“A terrific book...opens up a dark door in the Victorian credenza--dense with detail, and yet with a nimbleness to the writing that's unusual even for a very good detective story.” ―Nicholson Baker“A brilliant reconstruction of the obstacles facing detectives long before the advent of forensic technology.” ―Nick Owchar, LA Times Book Review“Kate Summerscale's THE SUSPICIONS OF MR. WHICHER (Walker; 360 pages) is not just a dark, vicious true-crime story; it is the story of the birth of forensic science, founded on the new and disturbing idea that innocent, insignificant domestic details can reveal unspeakable horrors to those who know how to read them.” ―Lev Grossman, Time“One eloquent doozy of a true-crime thriller.” ―Entertainment Weekly, Grade A-“The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher" combines a thumping good mystery yarn with fine social and literary history.” ―Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air“This is a great biographical fiction of an interesting real life mid nineteenth century detective working a shocking homicide case.” ―Harriet Klausner, Mysterylovers.com“Fascinating.” ―Roger Miller, Denver Post“If you are a mystery lover, or if you have ever wondered how the modern love of the genre began, you'll enjoy Summerscale's tracing of the early days of the profession and the fascination it exerted...a fascinating look at Victorian life, death and detection” ―Mary Foster, Associated Press“Summerscale's clean writing makes The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher so dynamic that she can't be accused of "freezing" the past--instead, she has done a masterly job of reviving it, with all its curiosities and contradictions. But, most strikingly, she has created an enthralling mystery by overlaying the fictional tools of misdirection and suspense onto a nonfiction narrative that, in its day, helped inspire writers to create a new fictional genre--a strange and very impressive feat.” ―Britt Peterson, The American Scholar“told and interwoven with admirable skill and definition.” ―Bookpage“A bang-up sleuthing adventure.” ―Kirkus Reviews“A mesmerizing portrait of one of England's first detectives and the gruesome murder investigation that nearly destroyed him….Whicher is a fascinating hero, and readers will delight in following every lurid twist and turn in his investigation.” ―Publishers Weekly, Starred Review“Summerscale organizes the book like a period novel, with a denouement that suggests that full justice was never done. Erik Larson (The Devil in the White City ) fans will be enthralled.” ―Library Journal“Summerscale has produced not only a dazzling non-fiction thriller, but also an acute work of literary and social history.” ―The Daily Express“Kate Summerscale's book is 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, we are drawn into a detective story within a detective story that takes us halfway into the 20th century and across the sea to Tasmania before the clues finally add up to what surely must be the last word on the Road Hill Murder.” ―The Daily Mail“Summerscale has constructed nothing less than a masterpiece… The Suspicions of Mr Whicher is at one and the same time a crime thriller, a sociological history, a biography and a fascinating essay on the nature of investigation… My shelves are stacked with books about crime, but none more satisfying than this.” ―Craig Brown, The Mail on Sunday“Summerscale has done excellent research in ferreting out the details of this curious case. [She] has come up with a new solution to the puzzle and in doing so has produced a book that deepens and expands the knowledge of what one would have thought was an already over-examined case: a remarkable achievement.” ―The Sunday Times

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Product details

Hardcover: 384 pages

Publisher: Walker Books; 1 edition (April 15, 2008)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0802715354

ISBN-13: 978-0802715357

Product Dimensions:

5.7 x 1.3 x 8.5 inches

Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds

Average Customer Review:

3.8 out of 5 stars

235 customer reviews

Amazon Best Sellers Rank:

#102,583 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

I first became aware of Mr. Whicher from the firm series on Amazon. I then searched Amazon for books that preceded the film series and found this non-fiction work by Kate Summerscale. While there are sections with strong attention to detail that makes for a little slow reading, for the great majority of the book it reads like fiction and moves at a good pace. Well written and the film follows the book very closely. Enjoyable reading and a bit of history on the development of the detective role in England.

Summerscale offers up a murder mystery, and a famous detective, that proved to be the inspiration for many other murder stories, from Dickens to James. The heinous slaying of a young child, whose body was found stuffed in the privy. But the drama of the case proves not to be in any high-speed chase of the suspect, or any drawing room speech that identifies the killer. No, the real story here is about fame for a detective who wasn’t seeking it, who meets up with a case complicated with a complex family history and an incompetent local police force, a case that takes years to unfold and pushes a brilliant sleuth out of the public eye out of embarrassment. While the book itself sludges along at times, overladen with goodly research, Summerscale has pinpointed an intriguing story that shows us the problems of trying a case in 5he media, and also shows us the dying breaths of Victorian mores, as a new world of science and evidence encroaches on the world of old-fashioned know-how.

Detective Inspector Jonathan "Jake" Whicher (1 Oct 1814 - 29 June 1881) was one of the original eight members of the Detective Branch at the Scotland Yard established in 1842, he was also Charles Dickens's inspiration for Inspector Bucket. Reading this I was thrown back in time to when everything was new. Where social class gave you a pass for just about anything. Had that not been a factor this may have been solved quicker. Well Whicher did solve it he just couldn't prove it. I really liked how the author tied in these events and people to other works of literature. She also gave us old photos and news paper clipping.

This book gives a good clear account of the famous Constance Kent murder case that rocked England and mystified all in the middle of the nenteenth century. However, it does a good deal more than that, which some readers may find irritating, but which seemed to me interesting and the principal virtue of the book: 1) it shows how the case influenced the development of forensic science and detective work; 2) it shows how sensational details of the case worked their way into the literature of the time in the novels of Dickens and Collins and detective fiction which came after; 3) it follows the later life of all the major figures, bringing in new material not contained in classic accounts of the case; and 4) it presents a solution of the crime, which, if not entirely new, has not previously been given with such convincing details. In short it places the facts of a particular murder within the culture of the day and shows how it shifted values. The references are as complete and detailed as one could wish. Finally, the book is well-written and a pleasure to read.

Excellent non-fiction book. A creepy murder and weird family, and a detective that got it right!!! The book lays out the murder and the clues set in a fascinating time period. The author explains the rise of the position of detective. This a true crime book with the first detective and lets the reader follow the whole story to the very end. Loved reading about the later years of the family and the life of Jonathan Whicher - about all involved. Highly recommended!!!! This book deserves an A+++++++

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.

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