BelEdit Book Reviews
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.
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