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The Suspicions of Mr Whicher: Or the Murder at Road Hill House

Author: Kate Summerscale
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Category: Book

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Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

12 reviews
Sales Rank: 130

Media: Hardcover
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.7 x 1.5

ISBN: 0747582157
EAN: 9780747582151
ASIN: 0747582157

Publication Date: April 7, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: New. SKU 0747582157. Mint Condition - with immediate next working day shipment from the UK to anywhere in the world.

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Customer Reviews: Read 7 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

Bringing the 1860's to life July 21, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful

This book has had almost unilaterally good reviews and I am not going to disagree. The author's skill is to take a rather bland murder in a Somerset country house - there was no sex, drugs or money involved - and recreate it with true verve and fascination as a story for the 21st century, relating it with skill and relevance to the works of Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, Poe and other writers who became swept up in the saturation press coverage of the death of little Saville Kent. As other reviewers have intimated, the mystery of the lad's death is well covered in anthologies of 19th Century murder (Kate Summerscale does not pretend to have unearthed a long lost secret and, in fact, she creates very little that's new) but her adroitness in weaving together domestic life in a dysfunctional middle class household with contemporary policing, contemporary literature, the baying of the public and the scorn heaped upon poor Jack Whicher is remarkable.

The book is dense with names and facts which give a sense of being told the whole story but it does not make it a heavy read. There is an engrossing insight into the mores of the 1860's and a poignancy in the telling of the protagonists' lives.The story skips along with nimble twists and turns and it would make a terrific film. I see Sir Michael Gambon as Samuel Kent, by the way, but as no photograph or painted portrait exists of the man we can all conjure up our own idea of how he might have looked.

Put your prejudices to one side if you think this would be a bit of a dull dog: it is a superb story and it is brilliantly told.

4 out of 5 stars

Victorian Murder Investigations, Public Attitudes, and the Birth of Detective Fiction June 21, 2008
2 out of 4 found this review helpful

If you are fascinated by the hypocrisy of the Victorians, you'll love this book. If you want to read a great murder mystery, you should probably search out a work of fiction instead.

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher has a wide charter: Tell the story of the murder of three-year-old Saville Kent in his English country home, describe the police investigations, relate the public reaction to the murder and investigations, detail what happened to the characters, help us understand our psychological need to read detective fiction, and provide new insight into the seeds of the crime.

Although the book claims to give us a fiction-like description of the murder and its investigation, Ms. Summerscale's writing isn't quite in the style: She's clearly a non-fiction writer. She's also not very careful of the facts: There's a glaring example in her "A Note on Money" that precedes the Prologue. In the first paragraph she tells us a pound is worth $130 today and in the second paragraph she tells us that a hundred pounds is worth $120,000 today (Yes, she made two mistakes!).

For my taste the book could have been edited down quite a bit. There was about 150 pages worth of material I was interested in within 300 pages of text. She presumes that I want to know more about Victorian authors of detective fiction than I do, and I could have used a much shorter version of what happened next to everyone.

I thought that the two most interesting parts of the book were how modern the analytical methods were that Whicher used (opportunity, motive, and a search for missing clothing) and the commentary on how much we want our detectives to be supermen who always find the criminal (making us feel more secure while allowing us to be moved by the passion behind crime) rather than thinking about the victim.

As for the speculation about the possible seeds of the crime, I thought that the medical parts of that were pretty speculative. The other parts seem more plausible and should have been exposed earlier in the book.

4 out of 5 stars

I would've enjoyed it more but... June 5, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful

A disturbing crime, the death of a child, treated so coldly and written so much like fiction that after a while you forget that this actually happened and then feel horrified at yourself.
I bought this book based on the intriguing review in the Daily Mail-I know!!!-and would've appreciated it more I think had I not read another review, which without warning gave the murderer away halfway through the article.
Thanks Waterstones magazine.
I was really enjoying reading about the start of detecting in Britain and the influence that Jack Whicher had on people such as Dickens and Wilkie Collins.
It was hard to pick up the book after that.
The writer carefully straddles the difficult areas of making fact interesting enough to read about whilst telling the tale accurately and it is quite horrifying reading how they treated this poor boy's body let alone as a CSI generation how they treated the evidence you want to yell out 'you're contaminating the crime scene!' all the time.
It is very interesting in a then and now way, how much credence was placed on gossip and hearsay and how intuition was so viatl to catching criminals in this forensic modern society we live in where we are scared to tell people details in case they are literally used against us.
It is a fascinating insight into a horrendous crime and a well written intriguing book which I enjoyed very much.

4 out of 5 stars

Just the facts, ma'am May 23, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful

I was slightly disappointed. The author did a fantastic job piecing together the wealth of information about the case -- newspaper reports, official records, letters, interview notes, etc. We know what everyone did in great detail. The author was careful to stick to the facts. She didn't fictionalize or make assumptions. That's good reporting. However, the result was that I was unable to connect with or feel sympathy for any of the people involved, even poor little Savile. All I had was facts, and facts can't put flesh on these people.

It's a good read, but it felt like something was missing. It's not the author's fault though. Unlike today's true crime writers, she didn't have the benefit of personal observation of the players. They just never came to life for me.

5 out of 5 stars

Middle class murder May 5, 2008
6 out of 7 found this review helpful

This absorbing book is an examination of one of the most famous murder cases of the 19th century. Three year old Saville Kent was found horribly murdered in the outdoor privy of Road Hill House in June 1860. Jonathan Whicher, one of the first plain clothes detectives at Scotland Yard, is sent down two weeks after the murder, to help the local police. Whicher becomes convinced that one of the family is responsible for Saville's death. The case exposed the Kents to intrusive publicity, and the family's history was laid bare. Samuel Kent's first wife had died, some said of madness, some said because he was having an affair with the governess. When Samuel then married the governess, and started a second family, the older children were said to feel neglected and jealous. Saville was the favoured child of this second marriage. Had one of his half-siblings murdered him out of spite & jealousy? Had Saville seen his father in bed with the nursemaid and been killed to keep him quiet? Had a jealous neighbour or disgruntled former servant taken their revenge on Samuel by murdering his beloved child? All these theories were canvassed in the press, and Jonathan Whicher's investigation reached an inconclusive end. His career was damaged by his failure to bring the culprit to trial, although he was confident he knew who the murderer was. Five years later, the murderer was brought to trial after a dramatic confession. But was this the truth? Summerscale's recreation of the crime is masterly. She shows the influence of the murder on the sensation fiction of Wilkie Collins and Mary Elizabeth Braddon which was so popular in the 1860s. The case exposed middle-class society's secrets and flaws.