The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher

The Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective

De: Kate Summerscale

Narrado por: Simon Vance

In June of 1860, three-year-old Saville Kent was found at the bottom of an outdoor privy with his throat slit. The crime horrified all of England and led to a national obsession with detection - ironically destroying, in the process, the career of perhaps the greatest detective in the land.

At the time, the detective was a relatively new invention; there were only eight detectives in all of England and rarely were they called out of London, but this crime was so shocking that Scotland Yard sent its best man to investigate, Inspector Jonathan Whicher.

Whicher quickly believed the unbelievable - that someone within the family was responsible for the murder of young Saville Kent. Without sufficient evidence or a confession, though, his case was circumstantial and he returned to London a broken man. Though he would be vindicated five years later, the real legacy of Jonathan Whicher lives on in fiction: the tough, quirky, knowing, and all-seeing detective that we know and love today - from the cryptic Sergeant Cuff in Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone to Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade.

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher is a provocative work of nonfiction that reads like a Victorian thriller, and in it author Kate Summerscale has fashioned a brilliant, multilayered narrative that is as cleverly constructed as it is beautifully written.

©2008 Kate Summerscale (P)2008 HighBridge Company.

Reseñas de la Crítica

"Not just a dark, vicious true-crime story; it is the story of the birth of forensic science, founded on the new and disturbing idea that innocent, insignificant domestic details can reveal unspeakable horrors to those who know how to read them." ( Time)
"A bang-up sleuthing adventure." ( Kirkus Reviews)

Fascinating

Summerscale tells the true story of the murder of 4 year old Saville Kent, and of the effect it had on his family and the Scotland Yard detective (Jack Whicher) sent to unravel the mystery. Whicher's accusation didn't hold up in court, and as a result his renown and career took a slow but steady decline.

Summerscale uses mainly primary sources to give information from the broad spectrum of public opinion, down to the minutiae of the Kent family daily life. The amount of information is fantastic, and the details give the reader a full picture of the times. Her prose does not sparkle, nor is it lively; at times it is down right dull. Regardless, this is a fascinating look into Victorian detection in general, Whicher and the Kent case in particular.

Simon Vance is an excellent narrator, and did a fine job with this.

A good true crime mystery

The happenings at a English countryside home, the mysterious death of a child leads to a twisty mystery. Who killed Saville Kent?
This book is an intriguing historical telling of a murder whose prime suspect lived into the 20th century. It is a tragic and intricate telling of the birth of the mystery wound about the history of a real case. Fans of Father Brown, Agatha Christie, Charles Dickens, and Arthur Conan Doyle will find in unputdownable.

Witty, Horrifying, Brillant Page Turner

Any additional comments?

I had to scan back through my audible records to get the correct number, I've listed to 61 works of nonfiction in the last year. This was HANDS DOWN the best. The narrator was fabulous, he did all the voices which was just lovely. The writing was beautiful. The author perfectly captured the intrigue of mid Victorian England, the devastating and baffling nature of the crime, and the advancement of the field of detection. It was well balanced, well paced, and fascinating from start to finish. 10/10 and I don't say that lightly.

Much interesting material, sometimes slow

This is a great book for history buffs and detective fiction buffs. The crime itself was shocking, and the character of one of the first murder detectives is interesting. At times it reads like a murder mystery, but there is also a great deal of historical detail about the early science of detection, its position in society and literature of the time, Whicher's prior cases, etc. This material really slowed the narrative down for me, and I found myself feeling the book was needlessly padded. I think both the story line and the historical material would have benefitted from being separated, so that they did not, as it were, keep interrupting each other.

Simon Vance is one of my all-time favorite narrators. The reason for the four stars is that I found his technique of reading the quotes in character voices jarring. Much of the first part of the book quotes various members of the household, police, etc., and I found the constantly-changing voices an irritation.

Informative and entertaining!

The similarities to the Jon Benet Ramsey murder are uncanny! Very informative on the history of the defective as well as entertaining!