The suspicions of Mr. Whicher a shocking murder and the undoing of a great Victorian detective
In June of 1860 three-year-old Saville Kent was found at the bottom of an outdoor privy with his throat slit. The crime horrified all England and led to a national obsession with detection, ironically destroying, in the process, the career of perhaps the greatest detective in the land, Jonathan Whic...
| Main Author: | Summerscale, Kate, 1965- |
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| Format: | Books Print Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
New York :
Walker & Company : Distributed to the trade by Macmillan,
2008.
|
| Edition: | 1st U.S. ed. |
| Subjects: |
| Summary: |
In June of 1860 three-year-old Saville Kent was found at the bottom of an outdoor privy with his throat slit. The crime horrified all England and led to a national obsession with detection, ironically destroying, in the process, the career of perhaps the greatest detective in the land, Jonathan Whicher of Scotland Yard. Whicher quickly believed the unbelievable--that someone within the family was responsible for the murder of young Saville Kent. Without sufficient evidence or a confession, though, his case was circumstantial and he returned to London a broken man. Though he would be vindicated five years later, the real legacy of Jonathan Whicher lives on in fiction: the tough, quirky, knowing, and all-seeing detective that we know and love today ... from the cryptic Sgt. Cuff in Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone to Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade.--From publisher description. |
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| Physical Description: |
xxiii, 360 p., [16] p. of plates : ill., maps ; 22 cm. |
| Bibliography: |
Includes bibliographical references (p. [343]-347) and index. |
| ISBN: |
9780802715357 (alk. paper) 0802715354 (alk. paper) |
| Author Notes: |
Kate Summerscale is the former literary editor for the Daily Telegraph and author of The Queen of Whale Cay , which won the Somerset Maugham Award and was shortlisted for the Whitbread biography award. Summerscale lives in London. |