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| The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective | 
 enlarge | Author: Kate Summerscale
Publisher: Walker & Company
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $10.25
You Save: $14.70 (59%)
New (45) Used (24) from $7.45
Avg. Customer Rating:  51 reviews
Sales Rank: 3998
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.9 x 1.5
ISBN: 0802715354
Dewey Decimal Number: 364.1523094231
EAN: 9780802715357
ASIN: 0802715354
Publication Date: April 15, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Painfully Boring August 7, 2008
7 out of 10 found this review helpful
This book is supposed to concern the murder of a 3 year old boy. I thought. However, the book seems to be about everything in the 1800's which the author wants to write about - what the policeman wore, how it's possible the detective had a child (like I really care), and how seemingly every writer in the 1800's based their detectives on this wonderful Mr. Whicher. So says she.
Halfway through the book the murderer comes forward. As for the "sensational" trial, it lasted 20 minutes and consisted of a confession - how sensational can that be? What the author does not tell: how did her family feel about her confession? What were their thoughts? Did they go out of their way to attend the trial to see her sentenced for her crime, or were they there for moral support? How did her step-mother feel about her beloved son being murdered in order to devastate her life? Well, the author is not going to tell us the important stuff. We must learn about the murderer's brother's interest in coral reefs.
What most people would like to know (me) is how can someone go from being a cold-blooded murderer (could you slit a little child's throat?) to being a "normal," helpful member of society? It would have been a lot better if the author had gotten more background on what the murderer was really like (other than being quiet, nervous, etc.) She got a lot more on what the brother's personality was like.
As much as she went into detail about various 1800's things (why cops are called cops) she does not explain why a hospital was called an almshouse, and why someone living in an almhouse would have plenty of money to leave when they died.
There is far too much (possibly 3/4's of the book) regarding authors such as Poe and Dickens and what they wrote about. Towards the end of the book the author even admits she got so wrapped up in going off on other tangents that she forgot that Saville, the murdered child, had actually been a person with his own life. The only thing I can think is it was 150 years ago and next to impossible to find personal information which would help us to understand this family. So the author decided to fill in space with everything else.
This book didn't make me feel like I was "there," only that I was being forced to read about what the author found fascinating.
So don't go into it thinking you're going to read a fascinating in-depth murder mystery or you will be very disappointed.
 Four books in one; and that's not a good thing August 25, 2008
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
The reviewers here, especially the paid ones, do readers a disservice when they praise the mystery aspects of this book without emphasizing the unending details with which the author has bogged down the book. It's hard to believe these newspaper and magazine reviewers read the book in its entirety?
Is this a story of Jonathan Whicher and the creation of the police detective? Or a lesson in Victorian families? Maybe it's a general history of the origins of the detective in mystery novels? What it is not, is a well-edited, real-life mystery with historical details peppered in to add context. Someone give this book a real editor and reign in the ramblings of a research-happy writer.
It is obvious that the writer spent years compiling data and scouring diaries and other sources to include personal information to enhance the narrative. But the way they are used only serve to stall the flow of the story, not to enrich it. The writer interrupts herself so often, you could be excused for thinking there were multiple authors. There is so much repetition that you can begin to feel you've already read this or that paragraph.
This book is not a narrative, but a museum. Every detail, however mundane, is included. Everything the writer found in her research is in the book, many repeated several times. I applaud the author on her diligence and thoroughness in gathering every possible piece of data. In fact, I place some of the blame on the editor for not doing his/her job. A great researcher cannot necessarily be expected to be a great condenser. That's where the publishing company is supposed to come in.
There are a couple of good stories in this book. You will just have to wade through a lot of unnecessary facts to find them.
If someone had warned me, I'd have checked it out of the library instead of spending money to own this book.
 Fascinating story May 6, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Not only is the murder itself a fascinating puzzle but the author weaves into it the history of Victorian detective fiction and the ways in which reality and fiction interacted to create the figure of the modern 'detective'. Ms. Summerscale seems to have read everything and marshals all her scholarship in very readable form.
A great read! Fascinating... May 7, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
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 Constance Kent Murder Case and Birth of the Enigma Novel May 15, 2008
6 out of 10 found this review helpful
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 ), 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 Rameey. 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.
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