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The Invention of Murder
- How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime
- Narrated by: Jennifer M. Dixon
- Length: 19 hrs and 57 mins
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Publisher's summary
In this fascinating exploration of murder in 19th-century England, Judith Flanders examines some of the most gripping cases that captivated the Victorians and gave rise to the first detective fiction.
Murder in the 19th century was rare. But murder as sensation and entertainment became ubiquitous, with cold-blooded killings transformed into novels, broadsides, ballads, opera, and melodrama - even into puppet shows and performing-dog acts. Detective fiction and the new police force developed in parallel, each imitating the other - the founders of Scotland Yard gave rise to Dickens's Inspector Bucket, the first fictional police detective, who in turn influenced Sherlock Holmes and, ultimately, even P. D. James and Patricia Cornwell.
In this meticulously researched and engrossing book, Judith Flanders retells the gruesome stories of many different types of murder in Great Britain, both famous and obscure: from Greenacre, who transported his dismembered fiancee around town by omnibus, to Burke and Hare's bodysnatching business in Edinburgh; from the crimes (and myths) of Sweeney Todd and Jack the Ripper, to the tragedy of the murdered Marr family in London's East End. Through these stories of murder - from the brutal to the pathetic - Flanders builds a rich and multi-faceted portrait of Victorian society in Great Britain.
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Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Janalyn
- 03-14-20
Excellent, awesome and educational!
I love true crime and history so this book was perfect for me. They do have true crime stories throughout this book, but they also have great stories about the history of England’s criminal system. From the first police who walked the beach to Scotland yard this is an education and crime. If you like historical true crime and history you will love this book. If you were just looking for gory details that is not this book. I am so glad I bought this book and now I will be reading it again in the futur.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Brian Zickel
- 08-21-20
Nice Try But Ultimately Bites More Than It Can Chew
I listened to the book on Audible and the narration was good if not spectacular. The narrator had a challenge keeping
My attention, and this is coming from someone who loves noir/gothic setting and true crime.
The real problem was that the book is so poorly organized with the author jumping in and out of references to true crime and the literature they supposedly influenced whole also going back and forth throughout the 18th century that it became somewhat white noise.
I also question some of the conclusions the author comes to in her analysis of where real-life murders affected literature and where literature affected the real world. For a book supposedly trying the connect a massive amount of dots, it reads more like a survey of interesting coincidences with some suggestions of actual, intentional, influence. As a result, deeper analysis is limited and the book reads more like it is simply trying to keep ahold of a topic that requires better and deeper discussions.
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3 people found this helpful
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- April
- 09-15-19
Boring
This is literally my 6th time trying to read this book because I love true crime. I tried 5 times with the physical book and gave up and thought perhaps the audio would be better. Nope. Fascinating subject managed to be written in such a dreadfully boring way that even when read in audio it was worse. So disappointed.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Hamptot71
- 03-26-21
Warning: Do Not Drive or and Listen to this
It is so dull and monotone, you will be lulled right to sleep. It should come with a do not drive or operate heavy machinery warning. I can't listen more than 10 minutes before I'm dozing.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Jason Russell
- 02-05-23
Captivating stories in history
Learned a lot from this entertaining book. The narration really made it exciting, as well.
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- Madalynn Manzanares
- 12-31-22
Well Done.
There was a lot of information, was well put together, and the narrator was great.
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- TARA
- 10-12-21
Too long
This book could have been trimmed down by up to three quarters. The topic had potential. But the author dug so deep into the cases that the listener’s mind easily stops paying attention because there is so much useless information spewed out. The author should have just focused on a few cases. Some of the ones that I had never heard from before would have been fine without all of the other useless information.
The narrator is very flat and does not help the situation. It took me a while to get use to her voice and cadence. But I still don’t like it.
I do not recommend this audible book.
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- joey carbo
- 09-20-21
Dry and boring
Starts out ok but goes into long descriptions of books written about the same boring story over and over, etc. it quickly loses what intrigue it has after a couple chapters.
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- Peter
- 08-20-21
Brutally Boring
My god, how can a subject that has the potential to be so interesting be so terribly boring...the narrator sounds like she's just as bored as the listener is likely to be.
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Overall
- Sherry
- 07-11-21
A Very Good Book
The research seemed through and the narration engaging. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in Victorian England. Rather fascinating.
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Doesn’t question it’s sources enough
- By Emily Stoneking on 11-27-18
By: Michelle Morgan
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The Victorian City
- Everyday Life in Dickens' London
- By: Judith Flanders
- Narrated by: Corrie James
- Length: 16 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Judith Flanders, one of Britain's foremost social historians, explores the world portrayed so vividly in Dickens' novels, showing life on the streets of London in colorful, fascinating detail. From the moment Charles Dickens, the century's best-loved English novelist and London's greatest observer, arrived in the city in 1822, he obsessively walked its streets, recording its pleasures, curiosities, and cruelties.
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UNFORTUNATLY DISAPPOINTED, IS NOT INTERESTING
- By Count B on 02-04-18
By: Judith Flanders
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Murder of Magpies
- By: Judith Flanders
- Narrated by: Susan Duerden
- Length: 8 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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It's just another day at the office for book editor Samantha Clair. Checking jacket copy for howlers, wondering how to break it to her star novelist that her latest effort is utterly unpublishable, lunch scheduled with gossipy author Kit Lowell, whose new book will deliciously dish the dirt on the fashion industry. But little does she know how much trouble Kit's book is about to be. Before it even goes to print.
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Excellent novel, horrible narrator
- By David on 03-20-17
By: Judith Flanders
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The Butchering Art
- Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine
- By: Lindsey Fitzharris
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Butchering Art, the historian Lindsey Fitzharris reveals the shocking world of 19th-century surgery on the eve of profound transformation. She conjures up early operating theaters - no place for the squeamish - and surgeons, working before anesthesia, who were lauded for their speed and brute strength. They were baffled by the persistent infections that kept mortality rates stubbornly high. A young, melancholy Quaker surgeon named Joseph Lister would solve the deadly riddle and change the course of history.
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Not one boring moment!
- By WRWF on 12-22-17
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The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream
- The Hunt for a Victorian Era Serial Killer
- By: Dean Jobb
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 9 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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In the span of fifteen years, Dr. Thomas Neill Cream murdered as many as ten people in the United States, Britain, and Canada, a death toll with almost no precedent. Poison was his weapon of choice. Largely forgotten today, this villain was as brazen as the notorious Jack the Ripper. The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream exposes the blind trust given to medical practitioners, as well as the flawed detection methods, bungled investigations, corrupt officials, and stifling morality of Victorian society that allowed Dr. Cream to prey on vulnerable and desperate women.
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Hard to Follow
- By Jessica on 08-26-21
By: Dean Jobb
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Dark Archives
- A Librarian's Investigation into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin
- By: Megan Rosenbloom
- Narrated by: Justis Bolding
- Length: 6 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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On bookshelves around the world, surrounded by ordinary books bound in paper and leather, rest other volumes of a distinctly strange and grisly sort: those bound in human skin. Would you know one if you held it in your hand? In Dark Archives, Megan Rosenbloom seeks out the historic and scientific truths behind anthropodermic bibliopegy - the practice of binding books in this most intimate covering.
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Fascinating
- By Abbey Pflegl on 11-21-21
By: Megan Rosenbloom
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The Battered Body Beneath the Flagstones, and Other Victorian Scandals
- By: Michelle Morgan
- Narrated by: Anne Dover
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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A grisly book dedicated to the crimes, perversions and outrages of Victorian England, covering high-profile offences - such as the murder of actor William Terriss, whose stabbing at the stage door of the Adelphi Theatre in 1897 filled the front pages for many weeks - as well as lesser-known transgressions that scandalised the Victorian era. The tales include murders and violent crimes but also feature scandals that merely amused the Victorians.
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Doesn’t question it’s sources enough
- By Emily Stoneking on 11-27-18
By: Michelle Morgan
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Gory Details
- By: Erika Engelhaupt
- Narrated by: Mari Weiss
- Length: 8 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Filled to the brim with far-out facts, this wickedly informative narrative from the author of National Geographic's popular Gory Details blog takes us on a fascinating journey through an astonishing new reality. Blending humor and journalism in the tradition of Mary Roach, acclaimed science reporter Erika Engelhaupt investigates the gross, strange, and morbid absurdities of our bodies and our universe.
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Entertaining, educational, and unique!
- By Ashlee on 06-27-21
By: Erika Engelhaupt
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The Ultimate Evil
- The Search for the Sons of Sam
- By: Maury Terry
- Narrated by: Keith Szarabajka
- Length: 24 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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The true crime cult classic that inspired an upcoming Netflix documentary series and companion podcast, The Ultimate Evil follows journalist Maury Terry’s terrifying investigation into the true evil behind the Son of Sam murders.
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Exquisitely researched.
- By Anonymous User on 04-24-21
By: Maury Terry
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All That Remains
- A Renowned Forensic Scientist on Death, Mortality, and Solving Crimes
- By: Sue Black
- Narrated by: Angela Dawe
- Length: 10 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Dame Sue Black is an internationally renowned forensic anthropologist and human anatomist. She has lived her life eye to eye with the Grim Reaper, and she writes vividly about it in this book, which is part primer on the basics of identifying human remains, part frank memoir of a woman whose first paying job as a schoolgirl was to apprentice in a butcher shop, and part no-nonsense but deeply humane introduction to the reality of death in our lives. It is a treat for CSI junkies, murder mystery and thriller fans, and anyone seeking a clear-eyed guide to a subject that touches us all.
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I wanted a science book about forensics. I got a mostly-memoir instead.
- By A Customer on 11-29-19
By: Sue Black
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The Ghost Club
- A Penguin Audiobook Original
- By: Kate Winkler Dawson
- Narrated by: Kate Winkler Dawson
- Length: 4 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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For more than a century, some of the world’s most important thinkers and leaders—men like Arthur Conan Doyle and William Butler Yeats—gathered once a month and discussed the supernatural at The Ghost Club in London. In the early 1900s the club's chairman was Harry Price, the world’s most well-known ghost hunter. He and other members, like Harry Houdini, sought to debunk the charlatans who preyed on vulnerable people with fake seances, tarot readings, and spiritual encounters.
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Great Storytelling
- By TheCrystalFerry on 04-06-23
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The Royal Art of Poison
- Filthy Palaces, Fatal Cosmetics, Deadly Medicine, and Murder Most Foul
- By: Eleanor Herman
- Narrated by: Susie Berneis
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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The story of poison is the story of power. For centuries, royal families have feared the gut-roiling, vomit-inducing agony of a little something added to their food or wine by an enemy. To avoid poison, they depended on tasters, unicorn horns, and antidotes tested on condemned prisoners. Servants licked the royal family's spoons, tried on their underpants, and tested their chamber pots. Ironically, royals terrified of poison were unknowingly poisoning themselves daily with their cosmetics, medications, and filthy living conditions.
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Relieved and surprised
- By Amber on 09-28-18
By: Eleanor Herman
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Hell's Half Acre
- The Untold Story of the Benders, a Serial Killer Family on the American Frontier
- By: Susan Jonusas
- Narrated by: Lee Osorio
- Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1873 the people of Labette County, Kansas made a grisly discovery. Buried by a trailside cabin beneath an orchard of young apple trees were the remains of countless bodies. Below the cabin itself was a cellar stained with blood. The Benders, the family of four who once resided on the property were nowhere to be found. The discovery sent the local community and national newspapers into a frenzy that continued for decades, sparking an epic manhunt for the Benders.
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Historical FICTION
- By Schmulie on 03-26-22
By: Susan Jonusas
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Sex Cult Nun
- Breaking Away from the Children of God, a Wild, Radical Religious Cult
- By: Faith Jones
- Narrated by: Jaime Lamchick
- Length: 13 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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