The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher

Critics Review

• It is a beautiful piece, written with great lucidity and respect for the reader, and with immaculate restraint. A classic, to my mind, of the finest documentary writing

  John le Carré

• I can’t think of another book which takes you so fast into the smells, tastes and atmosphere of that time

  Doris Lessing

• A pacy analysis of a true British murder case from 1860, the unravelling of which involved one of the earliest Scotland Yard detectives and inspired sensation novelists such as Dickens and Wilkie Collins … Absolutely riveting

  Guardian

• Summerscale has constructed nothing less than a masterpiece … My shelves are stacked with books about crime, but none more satisfying than this

  Mail on Sunday

• Gripping, unputdownable

  Sunday Telegraph

• A terrific read in the Wilkie Collins tradition

  Susan Hill

• A remarkable achievement

  Sunday Times

• Summerscale has produced not only a dazzling non-fiction thriller but also an acute work of literary and social history

  Daily Express

• A tour de force. It sweeps us irresistibly into the investigation, turning us into armchair detectives … Under teh spell of Kate Summerscale’s scrupulous intelligence and mesmerizing research, we are drawn into a detective story within a detective story that takes us halfway into the 20th century

  Daily Mail

• An unexpectedly moving thriller

  Daily Telegraph

• Kate Summerscale brilliantly reconstructs the circumstance of the murder, the course of the investigation, and the long, sad consequences … Her narrative has the dark fascination of the sensational fiction her subject helped to inspire

  Spectator

• There is some terrific detail in Summerscale’s book … What the book does brilliantly … is look at notions of class, criminality, human nature and religion in an age of change … Engrossing

  Guardian

• A page-turning merging of scrupulous research with vivid storytelling. Full of atmosphere and stroking detail, it is a triumph

  Observer

• One of the Victorian era’s most intriguing murder mysteries is given a fresh and gripping examination

  Sunday Times

• A dramatic page-turning detective yarn of a real-life murder tat inspired the birth of modern detective fiction. Kate Summerscale has brilliantly merged scrupulous archival research with vivid storytelling that reads with the pace of a Victorian thriller … leaves one gripped until the final paragraph

  Rosie Boycott

• A thoroughly satisfying read, brilliantly researched, winningly told, and it’s hard to see how this subject could have been better treated. It’ll stand as a true crime classic

  Evening Standard

• Fact and fiction do not so much blur as bleed into each other in The Suspicions of Mr Whicher … Summerscale accomplishes what modern genre authors hardly bother to do any more, which is use a murder investigation as a portal to a wider world

  New York Times

• The best whodunnit of the year – and it’s all true. The fascinating story of a famous Victorian murder case and thedetective who solved it has all the ingredients of a classic murder mystery … Agatha Christie, eat your heart out

  Tatler