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The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective
By Kate Summerscale
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A Most Intriguing Volume
Although this book is non-fiction, the author presents the individuals and the events in a style leaning more towards fiction, with dialogue and detailed descriptions of people and places. Great insights into the Victorian world, and the world of the early detective! Summerscale also relates the popular mystery fiction of the time to actual events. The reader gets an interesting insight into the psyche of people living in 1860. A real page-turner for me, The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher definitely made me a Kate Summerscale fan!

The true case that started the murder mystery genre
This is a shocking murder case in Victorian England, complete with a host of suspicious servants, a scary labyrinthine mansion, the lord and lady of the house hiding dark secrets.

You’ve read these before, maybe by Agatha Christie or P.D. James? OK, but this a true story, complete with photos of the evidence and suspects.

Seen that before? Not like this. This is the true case that started the hunger for British detective fiction. Moreover, the first mystery writers based their fictional characters on these people. Well before before Sherlock Holmes, throughout England people began to follow the detectives’ investigations — they went on for years — and just maybe solve the case themselves.

In many ways, it is the first classic murder mystery.

While the detective story was invented by our Edgar Allan Poe, it was a bit of dead end. You see, there were no real-life detectives. Until Mr. Whicher and his colleagues at the Metropolitan Police.

I don’t how the author learned of this case, but the story she tells is really the story of the beginning of forensic science. Before DNA evidence? Yes. In fact, even before fingerprint evidence. Yet, these detectives were charged with solving crimes and using their “little gray cells,” they did.

If you read true crime, if you love a good British mystery, you must read this book. Creepy, riveting and brilliant.

Not usually much of a true crime reader, but I loved this one!
On a dark night in a country estate called Road Hill House a young boy, Saville Kent, is brutally murdered. Child of an unpopular government inspector, the suspect list for the gristly death is long, ranging from his nursemaid Elizabeth Gough and his father Samuel Kent to former servants and complete strangers. The local police don’t know what to do – violent murders aren’t part of their daily routine – so they summon a detective from London with experience investigating homicides. Scotland Yard sends one of their best men: Detective-Inspector Jonathan Whicher.

In Kate Summerscale’s “The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher”, we are treated to more than a mere murder mystery. This book covers the facts of the case, but she also paints a broader picture of Victorian society as a whole, and the ramifications of Whicher’s investigations. The attitudes of the middle- and upper classes towards working-class men like Whicher hindered his investigation time and time again. Searches for evidence were half-hearted and skipped entirely in the house of Samuel Kent, because local constables didn’t want to disturb the peace of the family. Whicher bypasses this sensitivity and dives right into his investigation, rummaging through nightdresses and prying into the past of the Kent family. England is shocked. In 1860 this was absolutely inappropriate behavior. Detectives were a relatively new addition to the to the police and were considered barely above the dark underworld they worked in, for how could they know so much about criminals unless they were villains themselves? But even as society shook their heads and disapproved they clung to every word printed by newspapers as a “detective-mania” swept the country. Summerscale examines the role of detectives in fiction, and shows the many ways that Whicher’s work in the Road Hill House murder inspired the great writers of the era: Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, and even American Dashiell Hammett.
The book is also an intriguing look back to the forensics and crime scene technology available in the days before DNA could easily prove guilt or innocence. A single piece of evidence could make or break a case, and it was far too easy to make a false accusation for every policeman could read the evidence differently. In fact, many amateur “armchair” detectives flooded Scotland Yard with suggestions in the case, especially when Whicher’s controversial conclusion is unable to stand in court because a critical piece of evidence is unable to be produced. A fascinating book about the birth of the detective and the tribulations of Mr. Whicher as he struggles with one of the most shocking crimes of his time; true-crime fans everywhere grab a chair and settle in for a good read.