Review: The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, Kate Summerscale

Title: The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House

Author: Kate Summerscale

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing [original edition 2008, this edition 2009]

ISBN: 978-07475-9648-6

Length: 372 pages

This non-fiction book lays out the story of four year old Francis Saville Kent, son of a prominent Inspector of Factories Samuel Kent, who one morning in 1860 was found to be missing from his bed. His mutilated body was discovered later that day in the grounds of the house and it was established early on that the murderer could only have been someone, family or servant, from within the household. When local police failed to make headway in identifying the culprit Inspector Whicher, a member of England’s first-ever plain clothes detective squad, was sent from London to investigate.

Summerscale has pieced together not only the immediate events surrounding the murder but also the pasts of all the main players including the Kent family and Inspector Whicher. If we need it, the story revealed here provides further evidence that phrases become clichéd because they are true and Mark Twain’s observation that truth is stranger than fiction is borne out. The Road Hill murder seems to have involved more odd characters, false accusations and misinterpreted evidence than ever Conan Doyle or Christie would have dared squeeze into a single story.

It’s obvious that a load of research, mostly from solid primary sources such as court transcripts and Whicher’s detailed reports as well as contemporary newspaper reports, has gone into this book. For me the first chapter, although probably necessary, was the least engaging as it was a bit of a jumble of people’s names and their precise locations at particular points in the timeline immediately before and after the boy’s death. However after this chapter I found the book more to my taste as there was some in depth analysis of the facts that Summerscale had gleaned from all that research.

For me anyway this book was about much more than the attempt to uncover a murderer. There’s a a fascinating description of the development of the investigative techniques (or lack thereof) used in the fledgling field of professional detection. Then there’s the always maddening contemporary explanations for the actions of the women in the case (usually involving insanity brought on by their menstrual cycles of course). While supposedly learned men’s perceptions of my gender’s inferiority is not news to me the insight into the way these kind of events were tried, even then, in the court of public opinion was quite unexpected and totally gripping. I have a feeling that the families involved in modern-day cases such as the death of Azaria Chamberlain (an Australian case from 1980) and the more recent disappearance of Madelaine McCann would feel some empathy for what the Kents and the members of their household went through. And although many things have changed since 1860 (I doubt many modern police enquiries would falter due to an embarrassment about discussing women’s under garments for example) it would appear the willingness of the general public to give  freely of their ill-informed guesswork with respect to whodunnit and why is a constant.

I was happily reminded of something reading this book: I really do enjoy this kind of history. I’ve never been that interested in the ‘major events’ (kings, presidents and wars) but this kind of history, based on teasing-out information from a plethora of sources to develop a picture of how ‘average’ people might have responded to their world, does ignite my imagination and I had forgotten just how much. I studied the subject for several years at University and spent my first few working years as an archivist, but over time became a bit bored by it all and deliberately haven’t read a heck of a lot of history in the past 10 years or so. The book is reminiscent of one of my favourite history texts, Natalie Zemon-Davis’ The Return of Martin Guerre (a 16th century case of identity theft in France), and I am quite chuffed to have had my interest in this kind of reading re-kindled.

I heartily recommend this book both to crime fiction fans who are interested in the real-world events that influenced some early works in the genre and also to those with a fondness for well written, superbly researched history of the ‘little’ people.

My rating 4.5/5

Other Stuff

Check out other reviews by Caribousmum, Sam at BookGeeks and Book Club Reviews

The book has its own website and there’s a load of other information about the book online including articles in which Maxine at Petrona observed how this book has generated much discussion among crime fiction devotees about the age-old question of why we like reading this genre and Norm at Crime Scraps even has a personal connection to the Whicher story

 

Mini Review: Flu by Gina Kolata

Title: Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused It

Author:Gina Kolata

Publisher: Touchstone [original edition 1999, this edition 2005]

ISBN: 978-0-7432-0398-2

No. of Pages: 338

I don’t think there’s many people reading this blog who are looking for my increasingly rare forays into non-fiction but I promised myself that I would record something about every book I finished this year. I’ll keep it short though.

In case the long title doesn’t make it clear this book is about the scientists of various generations and disciplines who, in combination, have searched for, and found, the virus that caused the world’s last great flu pandemic. The book starts off with a short description of the worst impacts of the flu (in America) and gives a potted history of major disease outbreaks through history before stepping through the many decades of steps that were taken by a variety of scientists to understand what cased that pandemic. Perhaps the most well known of these steps was the extraction of the virus from the preserved bodies of people who had died in the pandemic and whose bodies had been accidentally preserved in the permafrost of Alaska.

Writing entertainingly about science is not, I assume, a walk in the park and Kolata (a Science journalist) does a good job of balancing the need to create an engaging, understandable narrative for non scientists with the need not to treat readers like simpletons (which happens all too often these days). There’s clearly a load of research in the book and while her conclusions are not always in line with other reading I’ve done on the subject of the pandemic itself they’re solidly backed up. And what is science if not the posing of theories and questioning of them? I’d have liked to see more reliance on primary sources and archival material rather than the delayed first-hand accounts and newspaper reports Kolata uses but all in all it’s a good read with more excitement and drama than some fiction I’ve read.

It’s purely coincidental that I read this book right now, when flu fear is again on the international radar, but it did remind me once again that our collective reliance on 30-second sound bites from mainstream media for our understanding of what’s going on in our world is a dangerous path to tread. Truly understanding how things work tends to reduce the fear and panic they can induce, and it’s a shame our media and governments don’t focus more on the reasoned, factual information of the kind provided by Kolata (and many others).

My rating 4/5