The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: The Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective – Kate Summerscale (Author), Simon Vance (Narrator),

Final Rating: 4.4/5

"The original country house murder mystery"

  A lone dog barks in the dead of night, a small empty bed is noticed and by morning a horrifying discovery violently shakes the foundations of an English country house and the once solid senses of decorum and unspoken ideals of 19th-century securities. Just who killed three-year-old Francis “Savill” Kent and what possible motive or buried secrets could this baffling case reveal? Wrapping “the original country house murder mystery” with a thoroughly intriguing step back to early detection methods and inspirations of literary genres- this was one audiobook I couldn’t turn off. With the masterful narration supplied by Mr. Vance and the atmospheric detailed style of writing from Ms. Summerscale this is a work that completely pulls the listener into the 1860 case and you feel as you are standing in the hallway beside the detectives or looking over a shoulder or peering around the doors as the amount of evidence and suspects grows with every passing minute. Not only intensive with the surrounding details of location, this book balances multiple topics of examinations and degrees of 19th-century public opinions all very neatly which only added to levels of enjoyment for this armchair enthusiast of the classics of mystery and crime novels.

  As fascinating as The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: The Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective was to follow, I can’t deny the slight negatives I noticed that seemed concentrated at the very end with surprising tedious tangents of aquariums, communications of seahorses in bell jars and fern owls. Although those sections are revealed later to have a purpose in this book, I wouldn’t have minded if those and a couple more tangents would have been shortened as they did slightly confuse me overall and I sincerely wanted to get back to the case at hand. Still this ended as quite an impressive book and I am very interested to read Ms. Summerscale’s upcoming title (The Wicked Boy: The Mystery of a Victorian Child Murderer) and highly recommend this one to any night-time listeners out there looking for a book that is sure to keep you alert and leaning in for more as it takes you to another place and time with a real life murder mystery that involves a loss of innocence and twelve people locked in an English house all hiding their own secrets and dozens of suspicions to be revealed.

-purchased and listened to Audible version