Review - The Suspicions of Mr Whicher

[wilderthan]

I've been meaning to read The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, and doing a course on crime fiction finally pushed me in that direction. I'd been told it has both the history of 'real life' detection and something of the development of crime fiction -- which is true, it does, though it's somewhat difficult to follow, sometimes, under layers and layers of detail. Kate Summerscale's work is certainly thorough, and from all I can tell, well researched. However, the murder that she's supposed to be writing about is possibly given less space than all the people involved, mostly Mr Whicher (unsurprisingly) and the lives of everyone involved after the case. In some cases it's relevant to the solution and to the history, but sometimes it seems rather tangential. In any case, the sheer amount of detail and the dryness with which it's written put me off somewhat.

Comments

[samuraiter.livejournal.com]

The writing is a bit thick, eh? I kinda suspected that, but I still want to read it.

[wilderthan.livejournal.com]

I think if I read more non-fiction in general, I'd probably have liked it more. But coming from books where every word is at least supposed to matter, and every detail is relevant, it's a bit of a pile-up in my brain, haha.