The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective

Detectives and detective fiction arose together in the 19th century, and Summerscale, with relish, uses the style of the murder mystery to unravel an infamous true-life crime that helped birth the genre: the inexplicable murder of a young English boy that made him the JonBenet of his day (and inspired Wilkie Collins's ground-breaking detective novel, The Moonstone). While tracing the many turns in the case, which humiliated Scotland Yard's man on the scene, Jonathan Whicher, Summerscale expertly weaves the early histories of policing and detective stories, and, most fascinatingly, follows the long afterlife of some of the crime's central characters to convincingly suggest a further turn beyond the conviction that closed the case.