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Oct. 21st, 2010 11:58 amThe Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective reads a lot like an actual murder mystery, except it's a murder mystery that occasionally takes long digressions into literary-criticism to discuss the origins and development of detective fiction, with a hefty dose of historical dorkery and LOLVICTORIANS for good measure. So basically it is pretty much my perfect nonfiction book!
The book focuses on the murder of three-year-old Saville Kent, who disppeared from the governess' bedroom one night and turned up with his throat slashed in the privy the next day. It basically turned into a real-life locked-room mystery, and everyone in England had an opinion: was it the governess? The father? The disgruntled gardener? The creepy teenaged half-siblings? Local police bumbled about in the way that you usually see in a Sherlock Holmes story, losing pieces of evidence and getting themselves locked in the kitchen when they were supposed to be investigating overnight, and finally they call in: JACK WHICHER, ~*~VICTORIAN DETECTIVE~*~
ENGLAND: Awesome! A genius detective! This is just like those Auguste Dupin stories, I am super excited to watch the case unfold.
JACK WHICHER, ~*~VICTORIAN DETECTIVE~*~: I think Constance the sixteen-year-old half-sister did it.
LOCAL POLICE: Do you have proof?
JACK WHICHER: She lost a nightgown in the laundry. A SUSPICIOUS nightgown.
LOCAL POLICE: Anything else?
JACK WHICHER: . . . I have a hunch!
LOCAL POLICE: . . .
JACK WHICHER: Look, haven't you ever read a detective story before? Detectives get hunches! Then they construct a plausible scenario based on a minimum of evidence and people believe them because detectives are geniuses. That's how it works!
LOCAL POLICE: Even in Victorian England, we actually still need more proof than that.
JACK WHICHER: Teenaged girls are creepy, okay! Beautiful Creatures? Anyone?
LOCAL POLICE: NOT GUILTY, and shame on you for stalking and accusing an innocent teenaged girl.
ENGLAND: Jack Whicher, we are disappoint. Man, I never realized before, but detectives are jerks!
And then Jack Whicher went home and sulked while ALL OF ENGLAND wrote him helpful letters explaining their theories about the case.
JACK WHICHER'S BOSS: Hey Jack Whicher did you see that someone thinks the governess -
JACK WHICHER: YES I SAW THE LETTER ABOUT THE GOVERNESS. >.<
JACK WHICHER'S BOSS: Well maybe do you think you should -
JACK WHICHER: IT WAS CONSTANCE. GO AWAY.
My favorite part of the book was hearing about the random people who got super-invested in attempting to solve the murder from the clues in the newspaper, as if it really was in a detective novel, and the way the whole event was sort of shaped into a fictional story in the collective consciousness, because I am a dork and find this stuff fascinating. (I also loved the chapter about the random person who decided he was an amateur detective and started holding investigations of all the largely-unrelated townspeople in the courthouse. "And where were YOU on the night of the murder?" "Uh, asleep . . .?")
Because the book really does read suspensefully enough to be a fictional murder story, I'm not going to spoil you by telling you who eventually confessed to the murder (history can still be spoilers!) but I will tell you that I found the public reaction to the confession possibly even more fascinating than the reaction to the first go-round of accusations. If you like mysteries and Victorians, I would say this is pretty guaranteed to be of interest!
The book focuses on the murder of three-year-old Saville Kent, who disppeared from the governess' bedroom one night and turned up with his throat slashed in the privy the next day. It basically turned into a real-life locked-room mystery, and everyone in England had an opinion: was it the governess? The father? The disgruntled gardener? The creepy teenaged half-siblings? Local police bumbled about in the way that you usually see in a Sherlock Holmes story, losing pieces of evidence and getting themselves locked in the kitchen when they were supposed to be investigating overnight, and finally they call in: JACK WHICHER, ~*~VICTORIAN DETECTIVE~*~
ENGLAND: Awesome! A genius detective! This is just like those Auguste Dupin stories, I am super excited to watch the case unfold.
JACK WHICHER, ~*~VICTORIAN DETECTIVE~*~: I think Constance the sixteen-year-old half-sister did it.
LOCAL POLICE: Do you have proof?
JACK WHICHER: She lost a nightgown in the laundry. A SUSPICIOUS nightgown.
LOCAL POLICE: Anything else?
JACK WHICHER: . . . I have a hunch!
LOCAL POLICE: . . .
JACK WHICHER: Look, haven't you ever read a detective story before? Detectives get hunches! Then they construct a plausible scenario based on a minimum of evidence and people believe them because detectives are geniuses. That's how it works!
LOCAL POLICE: Even in Victorian England, we actually still need more proof than that.
JACK WHICHER: Teenaged girls are creepy, okay! Beautiful Creatures? Anyone?
LOCAL POLICE: NOT GUILTY, and shame on you for stalking and accusing an innocent teenaged girl.
ENGLAND: Jack Whicher, we are disappoint. Man, I never realized before, but detectives are jerks!
And then Jack Whicher went home and sulked while ALL OF ENGLAND wrote him helpful letters explaining their theories about the case.
JACK WHICHER'S BOSS: Hey Jack Whicher did you see that someone thinks the governess -
JACK WHICHER: YES I SAW THE LETTER ABOUT THE GOVERNESS. >.<
JACK WHICHER'S BOSS: Well maybe do you think you should -
JACK WHICHER: IT WAS CONSTANCE. GO AWAY.
My favorite part of the book was hearing about the random people who got super-invested in attempting to solve the murder from the clues in the newspaper, as if it really was in a detective novel, and the way the whole event was sort of shaped into a fictional story in the collective consciousness, because I am a dork and find this stuff fascinating. (I also loved the chapter about the random person who decided he was an amateur detective and started holding investigations of all the largely-unrelated townspeople in the courthouse. "And where were YOU on the night of the murder?" "Uh, asleep . . .?")
Because the book really does read suspensefully enough to be a fictional murder story, I'm not going to spoil you by telling you who eventually confessed to the murder (history can still be spoilers!) but I will tell you that I found the public reaction to the confession possibly even more fascinating than the reaction to the first go-round of accusations. If you like mysteries and Victorians, I would say this is pretty guaranteed to be of interest!
