This book has been on my reading list for a few months, so I was really excited when I found it for $3.99 at Borders. It combines two things I love: murder mysteries and historical non-fiction. Whoo. The murder mystery was intriguing. A savage killing of a young child in Victorian England and everyone in the house was a suspect. Was it a sinister stranger or, as Detective Whicher believed, the calculated actions of an angry family member or servant. Detective Whicher believed that he knew who committed the crime but had no physical proof. Unlike modern whodunnits (and shows like Law & Order) the final solution to the case (which came to light five years after the crime via confession) wasn't a total shocker. If you want a total spoiler, you can read about the case here.
The timing of the events (1860) allowed for Summerscale to explore the evolution of the modern detective and discuss this case's influence on the writers of the day (including Dickens) and the development of detective fiction.
I found this book to be less about the murder mystery than about the evolving methods of detection in the late 1800s and the effect that these efforts had on the general public and literature. It was an interesting read but didn't really draw me in or satisfy me like other historical non-fiction mysteries have (Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City comes to mind).
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