True Detective Investigates Victorian Murder

Kate Summerscale's "The Suspicions of Mr Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective" is a marvelous book. Meticulously researched with copious notes and recommendations, this is non-fiction crime writing at its best!

Summerscale relates the vicious murder of Saville Kent, age 4, at the hands of some relative or staff member within his own home. The author is able to present the story of the murder itself along with the outrage of Victorian English society and the rise and fall of English detectives of Scotland Yard by intertwining both the official reports of the case, reports in magazines and from the comments of literary men and the judicial magistrates of the time. Even though it is a complex story, it reads wonderfully well due to the author's skill at pacing and revealing only what we need to know when we need to know it.

Although the murder crime itself is fascinating reading, the author's theme of the rise of the London detective, specifically Mr. Jonathan (a.k.a., Jack) Whicher, is what really pulls you into the story. Chronicling the fascination of Victorian society with detectives and their methods while also drawing out the opposing revulsion of the invasion of privacy and the tearing down of long-held tents of family life, Summerscale demonstrates both the admiration and contempt that these pioneer detectives faced. We hear from Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, early progenitors of the mystery novel, and we see how society embraces the detective yet at the same time is repulsed by him. A wonderful parallel, not voiced in the book, is our modern media obsession with forensics and crime scene investigators. It all started in the mid-eighteen hundreds with the formulation of this group of detectives at Scotland Yard.

Without spoiling Summerscale's (and Whicher's) suspicions and conclusions on the guilty party, let me just say that her case is strongly presented and well-documented.

This one is certainly worth the read!

Until next time, may your reading be both pleasurable and profitable.

Dimity Is a Dear

I just finished Nancy Atherton's first "mystery" in the Dimity series entitled "Aunt Dimity's Death." I enclose the word mystery in quotation marks because I'm not sure this is a mystery in the truest sense.

Lori Shepherd is the heroine who is struggling with a divorce, the death of her mother and a lack of purpose and stability in her life. She finds herself summoned to a curiously Dickensian attorney's office in Boston. She discovers there that the person of Aunt Dimity, a character is some stories her mother told her as a child is not, in fact, a fictional protagonist. Aunt Dimity is indeed a real person, and Lori is to complete a review and write an introduction to a children's book about Aunt Dimity for a small sum of money.

While on this pilgrimage in England, Lori finds out more about her mother and the mysterious Dimity. During the course of this rather benign adventure, Lori falls in love with one of the attorneys. Blending a touch of the supernatural (Dimity can speak to her through a journal) with history and a cozy setting, Atherton has created a unique heroine and sweet story.

While there wasn't much suspense in this novel, and no real Agatha Christie-type of mystery, the book was still an entertaining read.

Until next time, may your reading be both pleasurable and profitable.