Customer Reviews
Middle class murder - By: Lynette Baines, 05 May 2008 
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, & 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, & started a second family, the older children were said to feel neglected & 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 & 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, & 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 & Mary Elizabeth Braddon which was so popular in the 1860s. The case exposed middle-class society's secrets & flaws.
Brilliantly researched and completely engrossing - By: Snapdragon, 01 May 2008 The murder of a young child which took place at Road Hill House, Wiltshire in 1860 captured the imagination of the public & turned everyone into amateur detectives. The perfect example of a country house murder with a finite amount of suspects also inspired writers of the time such as Dickens, Wilkie Collins & Mary Elizabeth Braddon.
'The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher' is structured so that first, we learn the details of the crime, then we learn about the investigation which leads on to what happened next & the author's own theory based on the evidence. To say this book is well-researched in something of an understatement; if someone goes through a toll road, we know how much they pay; if someone moves to London we find out who they lived next door to; if someone left a will, we find out exactly what they left & to whom. I'm sure this level of detail would be irritating to some, but I found it absolutely incredible!
The book is also interesting in giving us a taste of the time, the attitudes of the people, the ways in which the Police force was growing & how events were shaping literature.
This is an extraordinary achievement & engrossing throughout. I can't wait to see what she will come up with next!
Murder most horrid - By: D. H. Dugan, 28 Apr 2008 
A reallly engrossing country house murder told with alll the suspense & horror that the nation felt on reading the accounts in the press. Summerscale weaves the developments in detection, & how the social scandals of the time were influencing & shaping the definition of the novel itself.
Unlike other reviewers, & having never experienced lsd (pounds, shillings & pence btw), I was amazed at just how many pennies were in a pound & what a shilling could buy!
It isn't perfect: for example there is a theory left to the very end which never gets a proper consideration in the rest of the text.
Also I wonder whilst highlighting the social realities of the time, that some discussion about the huge social restraint placed on women, both the lady of the house & the maid, might have added extra depth.
Still highly recommended.
9/10 - excellent book. Some criticisms, but don't let that put you off. - By: Madman, 23 Apr 2008 This is an excellent book, without doubt: a fascinating true story told well. There are criticisms to be made - strong criticisms even - but they do not change the fact that you will almost certainly hugely enjoy reading this. My criticisms are as follows. I put them here more to mitigate similar criticisms others have made than to do down the author of a basicallly excellent book.
1. The passages quoting from detective fiction of the period do not reallly add very much, & they are a distraction. At any rate, there is too much of it. This book is not, or ought not to have tried to be, a general study of detectives or detective fiction. Of course it is hugely interesting to read about Whicher the man & the historical context of his job as a detective, but whole pages here & there full of largely irrelevant extracts from Wilkie Collins et al, accompanied by oft-repeated banal observations from the author along the lines of "the role of a detective was to unravel a seemingly inextricable knot of threads", have more than a whiff of waffle about them.
2. Money. Why is she so obsessed with the price of things in 1860? Yes, a pound was a lot of money in those days. We get the idea. Telling us that a particular person paid 5s 6d for a train fare doesn't make it any more real, it just conjures up an image of the author sitting in a library hardly able to restrain herself with excitement & wonder (for the umpteenth time) at the fact that things cost more now than they used to. It's like she's boring a five-year-old by banging on about the olden days.
3. Explaining language. I didn't know that "denouement" means "unknotting", nor that "clue" came from "clew" meaning "thread". I'm glad to have been told. Jolly interesting. But she gets irrelevant & didactic about it in places. At one point the detective goes to Somerset. There follows a long paragraph explaining *for no reason whatsoever* the meaning of a few bits of random dialect from the county. Not interesting or necessary. It makes the book feel (only very occasionallly) like a school project or a rambling radio broadcast.
4. Annoying photo on the flyleaf. Okay, so most flyleaf photos are slightly annoying, but reallly, this one massively predisposed me against her. Maybe that's just me.
But despite alll that, it's a reallly cracking good book, well worth buying for yourself or another. Seriously, I'm recommending it to my friends.
Great stuff - amazing detective story - By: Andy, 12 Apr 2008 I loved this book - couldn't put it down at alll. Even better the fact that it is alll real, so you get into it more. It was written reallly well, enough of the hard facts but in an intriguing edge of your seat type manner.
