The perfect book if you love 19thC and crime stories
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher is a meticulously researched historical account that reads like an exciting whodunnit. Summerscale explores the nastiness festering within a household where a child has been brutally murdered.
- If you like 19th century British novels…
- If you like detective novels…
- If you are interested in the development of the novel…
- If you have any interest in the development of the science of forensics…
- If you like true crime…
- If you enjoy good factual writing…
- If you like a good story…
… then The Suspicions of Mr Whicher has it all. It plunges you into the heart of a police investigation into the murder of a child in a country house in 19th century England.
The Road Hill murder case scandalized the country and caused a literal sensation. This was a time when interest in sensation fiction was high; in fact it may even have been a contributing factor to its success. While the reading public were obsessed with sensational novels — the three best-known were Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White (1859–60); Ellen (Mrs. Henry) Wood’s East Lynne (1861) and Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret (1862) — here was a true story equal to anything that could be found within the pages of a novel. The public lapped it up.
Summerscale takes the narrative energy of a novel and applies it to a deeply-researched and painstaking analysis of a true crime. It’s like the author asked me to write a list of all the things I like to read most, shook them up in a shaker and came out with the perfect book.
I drove my husband nuts while I was reading this, constantly interrupting my reading to tell him how “I really LOVE this book!” It’s not a genre he would like so he wasn’t interested, but if you see yourself in the list above, go for it.
Find The Suspicions of Mr Whicher on Amazon and at other bookstores.
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