The suspicions of Mr Whicher

[Maria2007]

Not sure if this should go in adult fiction or adult non fiction (since it's a bit like a detective novel aka fiction, but actually is based on true story). Have just started reading this & am captivated, it's really fascinating & written in a very interesting, factual, dry way with no emotionality. Anyone else read it? By the way, I'm just only 1/3rd through so please please please don't spoil the ending!!

the Gargoyle is the best book ive read in AGES! gave me goose bumps. its by Andrew Davidson and i think its his first book. brilliant brilliant fiction.

I enjoyed it. Discussed it with my book club and they generally had the view that the person who was thought to have been the killer may have been covering up for the real killer. Also the medics in the group were particularly interested in the venereal disease aspect and what effect that might have had on the family.

Getting back to Mr Whicher, I was in 2 minds about this - I've read a lot of true crime in my time, especially Victorian cases (ah, they had a better class of criminal in the old days, you know! ), and I was really surprised that Kate Summerscale's book was sold as being about 'a long-forgotten 19thc murder'.

Actually the case is really well-known - even nowadays! I don't think she added a great deal to it, and I wasn't massively convinced by her musings on the 'invention' of the detective by Dickens and Wilkie Collins. OK, I bought it, and enjoyed it up to a point, but like others, I came away feeling a bit 'so what?'. I'd secretly been hoping that she'd made some sensational discovery that either proved or disproved things (I'm trying hard not to give the end away!).

Incidentally, there's a great novel by Francis King which is directly based on the Road Hill House murder - he set it in colonial India. It's called 'Act of Darkness'. Possibly out of print now, though.

I read this because friends of ours live in Rode (as it is now) & I know the house, from the outside anyway.

It was ok. Dragged in the middle & I took ages reading it because I kept leaving it & starting other books. I too found the other cases dull & wondered why she was mentioning them. I did finish it but it was a 'so what' moment. The last bits about the brother & the sister were interesting though - amazing that she lived so long! But you could tell that the author was transcribing & padding out censuses & the like.

Didn't enjoy it at all. Don't think it should be sold as a novel because it is just a load of research with barely any narrative binding it together.

Yes some of the detail/fact was interesting but on the whole it was really dull.

Reads like a (badly written) Phd....but I still enjoyed it! I don't think she knew whether she wanted to write fiction, non-fiction, social history or what so it is all over the place, and she just writes plain badly at times......

OK now I've finished this & yes, I was very disappointed by it too. Like the others have said, I think it starts out ok, is fascinating at first (especially if you don't know about this murder, as I didn't) but gradually it gets more & more badly written, gets very repetitive, and the detail feels almost obsessional (and very often irrelevant to the case). I think the book would have benefited from some heavy editing actually, lots of sections in it could have simply been deleted. And I think the author is simply not that good in bringing the whole thing alive for the reader.

That said, 'The moonstone' by Wilkie Collins is now on my to-read list... I had wanted to read it in the past but somehow never got round to it, but after this I certainly will.