The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House (2008)

Truly fascinating read that reminds us how truth is sometimes stranger than fiction, or at least just as dramatically bleak. ( )

The title held great promise. The problem was that a truly riveting story was buried under huge drifts of detail and repetition. Still, it was much more thoroughly researched and better written/edited than most true-crime books. So it's all good if you would rather be educated than entertained. ( )

This was somewhat disappointing. It seemed like it was right up my alley: a real-life murder mystery set in Victorian England. The book's endpapers are even illustrated with floor plans of the house where the murder was committed! What's not to like about that.


It was interesting to learn about the real-life character on which many of the early fictional police detectives were based. However, I thought there was too much unnecessary detail that didn't add to the story and which led me to lose interest in the characters. I felt the story could have been presented in a long magazine article.

I suspect that for me, no true-crime book will ever live up to Devil in the White City. ( )

I made it through Chapter 4 and then it was time for book club. I was incredibly disturbed by the actual murder, but then even more annoyed by how slow and convoluted this story seemed to be. I'm certain the author could have done something to make it lass confusing, right? Then on top of all that, I figured out who did it by the time they had the funeral for the poor little boy.

I really didn't love it. ( )

I've been meaning to read The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, and doing a course on crime fiction finally pushed me in that direction. I'd been told it has both the history of 'real life' detection and something of the development of crime fiction -- which is true, it does, though it's somewhat difficult to follow, sometimes, under layers and layers of detail. Kate Summerscale's work is certainly thorough, and from all I can tell, well researched. However, the murder that she's supposed to be writing about is possibly given less space than all the people involved, mostly Mr Whicher (unsurprisingly) and the lives of everyone involved after the case. In some cases it's relevant to the solution and to the history, but sometimes it seems rather tangential. In any case, the sheer amount of detail and the dryness with which it's written put me off somewhat. ( )