The Suspicions of Mr Whicher: or the Murder at Road Hill House - Hardcover

Summerscale, Kate

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0747582157 ISBN 13: 9780747582151

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2008

Synopsis

It is a summer's night in 1860. In an elegant detached Georgian house in the village of Road, Wiltshire, all is quiet. Behind shuttered windows the Kent family lies sound asleep. At some point after midnight a dog barks. The family wakes the next morning to a horrific discovery: an unimaginably gruesome murder has taken place in their home. The household reverberates with shock, not least because the guilty party is surely still among them. Jack Whicher of Scotland Yard, the most celebrated detective of his day, reaches Road Hill House a fortnight later. He faces an unenviable task: to solve a case in which the grieving family are the suspects. The murder provokes national hysteria. The thought of what might be festering behind the closed doors of respectable middle-class homes - scheming servants, rebellious children, insanity, jealousy, loneliness and loathing - arouses fear and a kind of excitement. But when Whicher reaches his shocking conclusion there is uproar and bewilderment. A true story that inspired a generation of writers such as Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle, this has all the hallmarks of the classic murder mystery - a body; a detective; a country house steeped in secrets. In The Suspicions of Mr Whicher Kate Summerscale untangles the facts behind this notorious case, bringing it back to vivid, extraordinary life.

About this title

Review:

'A tour de force. It sweeps us irresistibly into the investigation, turning us into armchair detectives... Under the spell of [her] scrupulous intelligence and mesmerizing research' -- The Daily Mail

'Summerscale has constructed nothing less than a masterpiece. My shelves are stacked with books about crime, but none more satisfying than this.' -- Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday

'Summerscale has done excellent research in ferreting out the details of this curious case . . . a remarkable achievement.'
-- The Sunday Times

'Summerscale has produced not only a dazzling non-fiction thriller, but also an acute work of literary and social history.' -- The Daily Express

'The best locked-room murder story you'll read all year. Bravo to Summerscale for breathing so much life into what could have been a dustily historical police procedural.'
-- The Independent

Just terrific... I thought there was a nimbleness to the writing. It's dense with detail but yet there is a lightness to it that is very unusual for even a very good detective story... One of the great things is it opens up a new door, you're looking into a life that is very accurately and richly described and you learn a lot about the period - you're in a very well-sailed boat. -- Nicholson Baker, Radio 5 Books Panel

Summerscale ... has produced a book that deepens and expands the knowledge of what one would have thought was an already over examined case: a remarkable achievement. -- The Times

Very simply, this is a fantastic book, fantastically written and it's a book of deep moral purpose. -- Ekow Eshun, Newsnight Review

What the book does brilliantly...is look at notions of class, criminality, human nature and religion in an age of change... engrossing. -- Ian Rankin in The Guardian

Book Description:

The fascinating story of a famous Victorian murder case - and the notorious detective who solved it

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0747582157
• ISBN 13: 9780747582151
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384