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

Author: Kate Summerscale

Narrator: Simon Vance

Unabridged: 9 hr 40 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/15/2008


Synopsis

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 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 Sergeant 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 author Kate Summerscale has fashioned a brilliant, multilayered narrative that is as cleverly constructed as it is beautifully written.

About Kate Summerscale

Kate Summerscale is the author of the bestselling books The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective and The Queen of Whale Cay: The Eccentric Story of "Joe" Carstairs, Fastest Woman on Water. She lives in London with her son.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Carrie on October 17, 2008

So disappointing! I was hoping for another "Devil in the White City" but, what I got was "Devil in the over researched, meandering, dull city." Poor Mr. Whicher. From the beginning we are promised a story about this interesting man and the case that brought him down. This was a man who influenced al......more

Goodreads review by Barbara on August 09, 2024

This is a true crime story about the gruesome murder of a child in Victorian England. In mid-1860, the relatively prosperous Kent family lived in a large house on Road Hill in the county of Kent, southeast of Greater London. The Kents' Road Hill house The county of Kent is southeast of Greater London S......more

Goodreads review by Katie on November 15, 2018

I absolutely loved this - a fascinating, gripping read, so full of detail and intrigue, and so well written. A real new favourite non-fiction - I would highly recommend.......more

Goodreads review by Margaret on August 20, 2008

To me this book reads like somebody’s master’s thesis that was expanded for publication – the style is very dry, there’s a compulsive need to share every single random detail of research, and a particular obsession with how much everyone paid for everything – but it’s an interestingly idiosyncratic......more

Goodreads review by Lance on January 02, 2014

Superb historical documentary of police detectives This is an amazing book. Rarely have I read a book which has been so meticulously researched. There is an unbelievable amount of detail about the origins of official police detective work, the personalities involved, the journalism of the mid-ninetee......more