The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a… (original 2008; edition 2009)

I couldn't get into this book. It promises a shocking murder, but goes about it in the most dry and dull manner possible. I'm going to stop torturing myself and just put it down. ( )

This is a dramatically written account of a very high profile murder in a large middle class household in Wiltshire in 1860, which caused a nationwide sensation. A 3 year old boy, Francis Saville Kent, is found missing from his nursery and his body found stuffed down an outside privy, having been stabbed and possibly suffocated. Mr Whicher is one of the inaugural detectives appointed by Scotland Yard back in 1842 and now an experienced detective with a nuanced appreciation of the criminal mind, called in to investigate the crime. He attempts to identify the murderer and, in what is now a fictional detective cliche, antagonises the local police by coming up with different potential solutions. Almost every member of the Kent family and servants is suspected by someone or other of involvement. The main theories coalesce around an accidental death caused by the child catching his father Samuel Kent in bed with one of the servants, and murder of the child due to sibling jealousy on the part of Constance and possibly William Kent, 16 and 15 year old children of Samuel Kent by his first wife. Whicher favours the second explanation, and Constance is summoned before magistrates but there is not enough evidence for her to be committed to trial. The mystery remains unsolved.....until five years later when Constance confesses her guilt. There are still holes in her story and the public and press are reluctant to believe in the guilt of such a young woman, but she is tried and sentenced to death, though this is commuted to 20 years penal servitude after a national outcry. Constance was released after her penal servitude and followed her brother William to Australia where she became a nurse and lived to see her 100th birthday under a false identity - though these facts were only found out by her descendants in the 1970s. This book is much more than just an account of this dramatic crime, it is also a history of crime and society in the mid 19th century and there is a lot of detail of other cases in which the highly esteemed Whicher was involved, and also comparisons with the growing literary genres of sensationalist and detective fiction during the 1850s and 60s, especially with Wilkie Collins, Mary Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret and Inspector Bucket in Dickens's Bleak House. I thought the book sagged a bit in the middle and become a bit repetitive with the hammering home of some of these theories, but overall this was a fascinating read. ( )

A meandering, uneven and poorly told story that had such wasted potential. This examination of a real-life murder mystery in Victorian England (1860s) is a defective detective story. Skip it. ( )

This was one of those books where what I wanted it to be wasn't quite what it was, which means I didn't enjoy it as much as I was hoping, but it was the fault of my expectations instead of the book itself. I found the parts of the book dealing with the Road House case very interesting, but was less excited when it focused more on Whicher himself and on the growing role of detectives in the investigation of crime in England.

First spoiler: I didn't finish reading the book. I didn't even get halfway through the book.

This book should be fascinating. It should be right up my alley. History? (The formation of Scotland Yard and birth of the detective.) Crime? (The shocking murder of a the youngest member of a wealthy family in early Victorian England.) Suspicious characters? (The questionable goings-on of the aforementioned wealthy family, and the rumors and secrets surrounding them.) It's all there--how can it be so freaking boring? This book is like taking a sleeping pill. When I try reading it at night, I can barely get through two pages.

The author spends a lot of time including text from early detective/crime literature, such as The Moonstone, and I'm not really sure what the point of this is. I'm not reading those books (yet--The Moonstone has been on my Want to Read list for some time); I'm reading this one. Yes, by all means, mention the fact that Whicher and the detectives of the newly-created branch and the inception of Scotland Yard inspired some of the first detective fiction ever written, but how does it help the narrative of this book to include passages from these fiction books, revolving around these fictional characters? I don't need to know about fictional inspector Bucket, unless Whicher is solving crimes by following the characters in these books (and if that's the case, then say so). I read some of them but then took to skipping the parts where she inserts parts from the books, because they were pointless and in my opinion did not advance the book at all. I can only assume that the author thought including this made it read more like a novel, but it totally missed the mark for me and I'd rather have a shorter book.

I'm also not sure why I need to know or care about the birthdate or place of some of the acquaintances of the Kent family (for instance, their doctor's DOB and place of birth, and a general description of where it is in comparison to the village, is provided). I don't care what the doctor looked like (at least in depth), so saying that he was "dark-haired, with full lips, a rounded nose and large brown eyes" does nothing for me. It was a little more interesting to learn that the doctor was friends with Dickens and was also friends with John Snow (who discovered the cause of cholera and is a founder of epidemiology). But again, I don't really care that he once lived briefly in the same area as detective inspector Whicher, nor that he was an avid gardener.

The book goes on tangents about related cases, or cases that are somehow related to what is being mentioned at the time (not from the book, but as an example: A family friend is mentioned, and the author could move into how there was a case Whicher worked with another 15-year-old girl or something). This wasn't a book about the history of the cases Whicher investigated, and while I wouldn't be opposed to reading a book about a different crime of his, I don't want to read about it here.

I think I'm finally giving up on this book and probably won't be picking it up again. Which bums me out, because I had really been looking forward to reading it! I really do want to know who killed Saville Kent; if Catherine Kent was truly the culprit, was convicted, or was let go and always suspected; if the family remained as insular as they had been, or if they felt the need to set up house elsewhere; and how this case lead to the end of Jonathan Whicher's career. Instead, I'm going to have to either find a detailed article (here I come, Wikipedia) or a more interesting, engrossing book about Whicher that doesn't spend a quarter of the book diverting into completely unnecessary anecdotes. This one is going on my Unfinished shelf, rather than continue to haunt me as a book I'm reading; it was a struggle from early on, and there's no sense in reading a book that feels like a slog and that I'm not enjoying. ( )