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The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher

Or the Murder at Road Hill House

By Kate Summerscale

(58)

| Paperback | 9780747599227

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Critics

The birth of the detective

The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, or, The Murder at Road Hill House by Kate Summerscale 384pp, Bloomsbury, £14.99 Some time before the end of this review, I will have stated whodunit. This should not deter you from reading Kate Summerscale's book, becaus ... (read full critics)

guardian.co.uk published on Fri, 24 Sep 2010

Read this Whicher report

The savage killing of a child. A dysfunctional family. A celebrity detective. A fervid press. The kind of unsolved murder that captivates a nation and leads to endless analysis around the office water cooler. Except that this was a crime committed in ... (read full critics)

guardian.co.uk published on Fri, 24 Sep 2010

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6 Reviews

*** This comment contains spoilers! ***

I at least hoped there would be an ending.

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Ficie said on May 31, 2011 | Add your feedback

The true story set in 1860 Victorian England of murder committed in a country house which at the time was talked about all over the world. Kate Summerscale has written a well researched account on how this brutal child murder appears to have fuelled the birth of detective fiction.
One night in ... (continue)

The true story set in 1860 Victorian England of murder committed in a country house which at the time was talked about all over the world. Kate Summerscale has written a well researched account on how this brutal child murder appears to have fuelled the birth of detective fiction.
One night in the summer of 1860 in a large Georgian village house in Road, Wiltshire a horrendous murder is committed. The family wake the next morning to discover that one of the children is missing from his bed, worse follows the child is found dead on the property and all evidence seems to point to the fact that the murderer lived on the premises.
The murder creates a lot of national public interest and within a few weeks London detectives have been called in to help solve this dreadful case, where the grieving household members are seen as the main suspects.
The man summoned to Wiltshire to solve the crime is a member of London’ s first official investigation squad at Scotland Yard was Jack Whicher. He was already a well known public figure but the case of Saville Kent’s murder seemed to be the beginning of the end for his career. With the case still unresolved by the beginning of 1861 enquiries had began to peter out and for several months Whicher withdrew from the public eye, only working on cases that were unlikely to attract the newspapers and therefore the publics attention. It was claimed at that time by a work colleague of Whicher’s that the Road Hill murder had undone ‘the best man the Detective department ever possessed’. In fact by March 1864 at the age of 49 he was pensioned off from the Metropolitan Police for reasons of ill health. His discharge papers quoted the reason as ‘congestion of the brain’ which in modern days we would probably refer to as stress, undoubtedly caused by the unsolved puzzle of the Road Hill Murder. In fact this unsolved crime probably worried him for the rest of his life as less when he died in 1881 it was from a perforated stomach ulcer. For a man that was once seen as a brilliant detective he was by then almost forgotten with just a very short obituary in the Police Gazette. He lost his hero status in the eyes of the public when he was unable to say with any certainty who it was carried out the murder of Savill Kent.
An interesting read especially as it is thought that this case was the one that helped mould the format of the detective fiction novel. In fact it is thought that Sergeant Cuff from the novel ‘The Moonstone’ by Wilkie Collins was based on Detective Inspector Whicher himself.

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Lindyloumac said on Nov 25, 2009 | Add your feedback

John le Carre calls it 'A classic' and Ian Rankin says 'Terrific.' It is certainly a fascinating piece of detective history. On the morning of 30th June 1860 the 3 year old son of a family in Kent was found murdered. Who did it? The local police could not come up with an answer, though it seemed obv ... (continue)

John le Carre calls it 'A classic' and Ian Rankin says 'Terrific.' It is certainly a fascinating piece of detective history. On the morning of 30th June 1860 the 3 year old son of a family in Kent was found murdered. Who did it? The local police could not come up with an answer, though it seemed obvious that it must have been one of the family as the house was bolted from the inside. Jack Whicher - the most celebrated detective of the day - is sent down to Kent to solve the mystery.
This true story reads very much like a modern piece of crime fiction. The author reveals just how difficult it was for the first breed of detectives to get into the lives - and, more particularly, the homes - of the upper classes of society. Whicher had a tough time. But he stuck to his guns. The end is quite surprising. Who did commit the murder

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GraJon said on Aug 19, 2009 | Add your feedback

This book has had a lot of hype, and to be honest this is not really that well deserved. The book starts off OK but goes off on too many tangents, by the end I could barely care less. This book bangs on about all the wrong things, related cases, other places in the country, irrelevant sub stories.

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Lunarossa said on Apr 20, 2009 | Add your feedback

A bit slow. However, it was interesting to learn a little about the early history of early detective fiction and made me want to track down and read several other books, particularly some more Wilkie Collins.

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Athene1710 said on Mar 24, 2009 | Add your feedback

Im currently reading this book and enjoying it however it can be over factual in places and its more about the facts then the story of the murder but the bits that get over factual i skip pretty easily.

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Vicky said on Feb 7, 2009 | Add your feedback