Pretty Jane and the Viper of Kidbrooke Lane: A True Story of Victorian Law and Disorder by Paul Thomas Murphy

Final Rating: 3.7/5

A Life and Crime remembered

  An evening stroll on a dark secluded lane, a plaster’s hammer in the hands of a calculating fiend and a young life left to ebb out cruelly in the cold mud: this is no brief summary of a penny dreadful but the real life crime investigation details that first came to light in the early hours of April 26, 1871 and in Pretty Jane and the Viper of Kidbrooke Lane: A True Story of Victorian Law and Disorder the reader is taken back to that early April morning and into the presiding months and years where unwavering facts and mere assumptions would slowly consume and destroy many that would find themselves involved in the mystery surrounding the heinous assault of a young woman named Jane Maria Clouson. But this is not just an in depth recount of a tragic murder. This is also a work that allows a life to be remembered. In the opening Mr. Murphy declares his intentions to tell Jane’s story and he neatly accomplishes this with a narrative flare that allows the known documented facts and shared subsequent topics of the Victorian era to cast a well needed light on the shadows of forgotten servants existences and the social orders of the time period.

  Although it accomplishes its overall task of letting a forgotten life and crime be remembered and is absolutely fascinating in parts especially concerning: the beginning chapters, details on early forensics, other murder cases around April 1871, a small section of portraits and copies of drawings and departing final theories from the author on the murder. It tends to linger and repeat in the court room chapters to the point of slight frustration. Still this work is told in a straightforward manner that unexpectedly allows the reader to recall names of witnesses, characters of the court system and outside names easily enough. In all honesty it’s not a bad reference on a forgotten unsolved murder mystery but for this Victorian Crime enthusiast, I was hoping for another The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective. It has great similarities to that title but just disappointingly misses something vital to end in the same ranking for me. That aside, I’m still glad I went ahead and purchased Pretty Jane and the Viper of Kidbrooke Lane: A True Story of Victorian Law and Disorder early and would recommend this title to any classic crime readers or to those who love true life humanizing stories or examinations of bygone social hierarchies and recorded drama(s) in the judicial system.

-purchased and read on kindle