The Suspicions Of Mr Whicher - Kate Summerscale
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The Suspicions Of Mr Whicher - Kate Summerscale
This is one of the best true crime books I have ever read. Summerscale’s approach is both forensic and literary, her research meticulous. She embeds the story in the crime fiction of the day, the newly emerged detective novel, the detective himself only just established in practice and the popular imagination. He was neither the dogged plain clothes policeman of our day nor Chandler’s hard-boiled private eye. Jonathan Whicher was an ordinary police constable recognised for his tenacity, logical thought and success in taking thieves and other miscreants. He was promoted to sergeant and selected to join the newly formed metropolitan police detective division. The general public no less than thieves was not overly fond of them. Newspapers fulminated against the invasion of decent citizens’ privacy at the hands of these ‘spies’.
In 1842 Whicher was sent to the grand home of Samuel Kent near Trowbridge in Wiltshire to investigate the horrific murder of Kent’s four-year-old son. The local police had botched the investigation and the whole country was aflame with theory and speculation. Whicher’s suspicions were unerringly accurate but rejected wholesale by the courts. Within his lifetime he was vindicated but the final solution to the mystery is only revealed in these pages with evidence that came to light well into the twentieth century.
The book is fascinating in period detail and hidden secrets and the story arc as compulsive as the best novel.
In 1842 Whicher was sent to the grand home of Samuel Kent near Trowbridge in Wiltshire to investigate the horrific murder of Kent’s four-year-old son. The local police had botched the investigation and the whole country was aflame with theory and speculation. Whicher’s suspicions were unerringly accurate but rejected wholesale by the courts. Within his lifetime he was vindicated but the final solution to the mystery is only revealed in these pages with evidence that came to light well into the twentieth century.
The book is fascinating in period detail and hidden secrets and the story arc as compulsive as the best novel.
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