The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher

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Bloomsbury presents The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale, read by Jessica Ball.

FROM BRITAIN’S TOP-SELLING TRUE CRIME WRITER

WINNER OF THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE
WINNER OF THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION
THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER
A RICHARD AND JUDY BOOK CLUB PICK
GALAXY BOOK OF THE YEAR, BRITISH BOOK AWARDS

'A classic' JOHN LE CARRÉ

'Terrific' IAN RANKIN

It is midnight on 30 June 1860 and all is quiet in the Kent family’s elegant house in Road, Wiltshire. The next morning, however, they wake to find that their youngest son has been murdered. Even worse, the guilty party is surely one of their number – the house was bolted from the inside.

As Jack Whicher, the most celebrated detective of his day, arrives to track down the killer, the murder provokes national hysteria at the thought of what might be festering behind the doors of respectable middle-class homes.

A body, a detective, a country house steeped in secrets and a whole family of suspects – this true story is the original Victorian whodunnit.

'Gripping, unputdownable' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

'Absolutely riveting' SARAH WATERS, GUARDIAN

'Nothing less than a masterpiece' CRAIG BROWN, MAIL ON SUNDAY

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

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