The Suspicions of Mr Whicher
The Murder at Road Hill House
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The Suspicions of Mr Whicher
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Narrated by:
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Harriet Walter
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By:
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Kate Summerscale
About this listen
Winner of the British Book Awards, Popular Non-Fiction Award, 2009.
Shortlisted for the British Book Awards, Richard & Judy Best Read, 2009.
A Richard and Judy Book Club Selection.
This fascinating story of a famous Victorian murder case - and the notorious detective who solved it - won of the 2008 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction.
It is a summer's night in 1860. In an elegant detached Georgian house in the village of Road, Wiltshire, all is quiet. Behind shuttered windows, the Kent family lies sound asleep. At some point after midnight, a dog barks.
The family wakes the next morning to a horrific discovery: an unimaginably gruesome murder has taken place in their home. The household reverberates with shock, not least because the guilty party is surely still among them.
Jack Whicher of Scotland Yard, the most celebrated detective of his day, reaches Road Hill House a fortnight later. He faces an unenviable task: to solve a case in which the grieving family are the suspects.
The murder provokes national hysteria. The thought of what might be festering behind the closed doors of respectable middle-class homes - scheming servants, rebellious children, insanity, jealousy, loneliness and loathing - arouses fear and a kind of excitement. But when Whicher reaches his shocking conclusion, there is uproar and bewilderment.
A true story that inspired a generation of writers, such as Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle, this has all the hallmarks of the classic murder mystery: a body, a detective, a country house steeped in secrets. In The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, Kate Summerscale untangles the facts behind this notorious case, bringing it back to vivid, extraordinary life.
©2008 Kate Summerscale (P)2008 Bloomsbury Publishing PlcListeners also enjoyed...
Critic reviews
"Summerscale has constructed nothing less than a masterpiece.... The Suspicions of Mr Whicher is at one and the same time a crime thriller, a sociological history, a biography and a fascinating essay on the nature of investigation....My shelves are stacked with books about crime, but none more satisfying than this." (Craig Brown, The Mail on Sunday)
"(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 by exposing the dark secrets of the Victorian middle-class home. Absolutely riveting." (Sarah Waters)
"[A] fastidious reconstruction and expansive analysis of the Road Hill murder case...Summerscale smartly uses an energetic narrative voice and a suspenseful pace, among other novelistic devices, to make her factual material read with the urgency of a work of fiction. What she has constructed, specifically, is a traditional country-house mystery, more brutal than cozy, but presenting the same kind of intellectual puzzle as her fictional models and adorned, as such books once were, with wonderfully old-fashioned maps, diagrams, engravings, courtroom sketches and other illustrations...More important, Summerscale accomplishes what modern genre authors hardly bother to do anymore, which is to use a murder investigation as a portal to a wider world. When put in historical context, every aspect of this case tells us something about mid-Victorian society...The author's startling final twist both vindicates her fallen hero and advances an 'aggressive' attack on moral hypocrasy in his day and ours." (Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review)
"Sparse, melancholy, beautifully written ... the year'...
What listeners say about The Suspicions of Mr Whicher
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Butterfly
- 06-01-24
Excellent research
Informative and entertaining. I know this story well but I still found this book very interesting
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Lightrhino
- 04-04-19
One of the best audiobooks I’ve heard of the 300+ I own
A fascinating true story, on every level. Beautifully told. I could not stop listening. And a remarkable ending.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Mike T.
- 28-03-19
Meticulous, gruesome and mostly very interesting.
A staggering amount of research and reading of old (very old) newspapers, interrogation notes and court transcripts have gone into this piece of dark history retold. Mostly it's a fascinating listen. The book is rife with quotes from said sources as well as quotes from contemporary books, mainly by Wilkie Collins and Dickens. A word of caution - If you haven't read "Bleak House" (Dickens) or "The Moonstone" (Collins) and plan to do so, minor spoilers may appear.
Narration is great. Not an easy task of narrating tons of quotes with just very subtle pauses or change of accents to denote that a quote is being read. A wonderful and impressive job by Harriet Walter.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
- newyorkhereicome
- 25-12-10
Wonderful!
Treat yourself to this one if you love true crime
Thorough research and a real talent for writing make this an amazing book to listen to
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- MRSB12
- 13-03-18
fascinating insight
A fascinating insight into the early machinations of detective work, long before forensics and DNA could swing a case..it really did come down to steadfast police work and gut instinct, with often the detective being ridiculed publicly. This is a sad story of an innocent child taken from his own bed and murdered which then resulted with many twists and turns and the secrets of the Victorian middle class household he belonged to, exposed for all to see. A true depiction of airing your dirty laundry for all to see...quite literally. Harriet Walter brought the book to life with her impeccable pronunciation and character portrayal. Her accents were spot on and her delivery perfect.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Amy
- 06-11-23
Brilliant! Didn’t realise it was abridged though :(
As a relative newbie to Audible I made the fatal errors of not reading the reviews or noticing that there are abridged versions of audiobooks. Though the narration was very good, I noticed that the story was a bit disjointed and felt cut short in places, then realised it was abridged. Won’t make that mistake again!
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
- Anthony
- 11-07-09
Fantastic
A Victorian whodunnit that is absorbing from the start. The characters in the household where the unfortunate murder occurs are described in minute detail, as are their actions, feelings and daily lives. I had no idea this was a non-fiction novel based on a true mystery in 1860 and can only wonder how the author managed to intreweave such specific facts about the day to day lives of the characters, the facts concerning the surrounding areas and the subsequent details of the family in later life. This book is brilliant and taught me many things about personalities, policeing in the late 19th century and much much more. Once again fantastic!
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5 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Claire Douglas
- 04-06-15
Brilliant!
Very well written and an excellent, engaging performance.
I listened to the entire book in one sitting as I found the tale to be gripping.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Theodor Adorno
- 13-12-20
Don’t get this abridged version!
I only belatedly realised that there is a fuller version of this book after having listened to the whole of this one. It explains why this particular book has an annoyingly fragmentary quality to it. This narrator is good, but I would much rather have listened to the full version...
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Goody
- 20-08-16
Absorbing account, meticulous research, superb narration.
Summerscale's absorbing story of a historical murder in 19th century rural Somerset proved a best seller when it was first published, and it translates well here to the spoken word. Her clear and easy prose supports with ease some high quality research, and Walters' intelligent reading, with its bell-clear diction, well-judged pace, variety of intonation and well-judged levels of expression (something not all actors are capable of when it comes to audiobooks) combines to make this an engaging "listen".
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2 people found this helpful