52 in 2011
Jun. 15th, 2011 11:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lumineaux48. The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale
This book is an excellent blend of true crime analysis with cultural and literary history. Summerscale takes a compelling murder case (unsolved for 5 years until the guilty party voluntarily confessed), the cultural emergence of professional police and detectives, and the birth of the detective novel as a genre, mixes them all together, adds a broad-ranging commentary on Victorian culture, and produces a highly readable and entertaining stew. I can do nothing better than quote the NY Times Review of the book:
"Summerscale accomplishes what modern genre authors hardly bother to do anymore, which is to use a murder investigation as a portal to a wider world. When put in historical context, every aspect of this case tells us something about mid-Victorian society, from prevailing attitudes about women (“prone to insanity”), children (“full of savage whims and impulses,” according to one 19th-century physician) and servants (“outsiders who might be spies or seducers”) to the morality-based intellectual constructs that codified such views of human behavior. "
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/20/books/review/Stasio-t.html
Summerscale uses a real person -- Mr. Whicher, one of the first generation of London detectives in the modern sense -- and a real case -- the Road Hill House murder -- as the springboard to talk about the birth of the fictional detective as created by Whicher's contemporaries Dickens, Poe and Wilkie Collins. Reading this book now makes me want to go read Collins' essential early mystery novels. For fans of the modern mystery novel and cultural history, this book is a winning combination. I highly recommend it.
This book is an excellent blend of true crime analysis with cultural and literary history. Summerscale takes a compelling murder case (unsolved for 5 years until the guilty party voluntarily confessed), the cultural emergence of professional police and detectives, and the birth of the detective novel as a genre, mixes them all together, adds a broad-ranging commentary on Victorian culture, and produces a highly readable and entertaining stew. I can do nothing better than quote the NY Times Review of the book:
"Summerscale accomplishes what modern genre authors hardly bother to do anymore, which is to use a murder investigation as a portal to a wider world. When put in historical context, every aspect of this case tells us something about mid-Victorian society, from prevailing attitudes about women (“prone to insanity”), children (“full of savage whims and impulses,” according to one 19th-century physician) and servants (“outsiders who might be spies or seducers”) to the morality-based intellectual constructs that codified such views of human behavior. "
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/20/books/review/Stasio-t.html
Summerscale uses a real person -- Mr. Whicher, one of the first generation of London detectives in the modern sense -- and a real case -- the Road Hill House murder -- as the springboard to talk about the birth of the fictional detective as created by Whicher's contemporaries Dickens, Poe and Wilkie Collins. Reading this book now makes me want to go read Collins' essential early mystery novels. For fans of the modern mystery novel and cultural history, this book is a winning combination. I highly recommend it.
