About this title: The national bestseller, now in paperback. 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.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Walker & Company
Date Published: 2009-02-24
ISBN-13:9780802717429ISBN:080271742X
Description: New. New Book. There is slight time wear. Otherwise looks new. Free tracking # included! International buyers are welcome. We ship every business day. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed! read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Walker & Company
Date Published: 2009
ISBN-13:9780802717429ISBN:080271742X
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Cover curls some. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 372 p. Contains: Illustrations. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Walker & Company
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9780802715357ISBN:0802715354
Description: Very Good+ in Very Good+ dust jacket; Minor shelf wear. 0802715354. Crisp clean copy, no markings.; 1.5 x 8.4 x 5.9 Inches; 384 pages. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Walker & Co, New York, New York, U.S.A.
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9780802715357ISBN:0802715354
Description: Amy C. King (Jacket Design) Very Good in Very Good jacket. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. 360 pages with index; American edition, fourth printing; Includes black & white photographs; Illustrations in black & white; Color illustrations; Textblock is tight with no internal markings; Illustrated endpapers; Boards are black with the title in red; Unfaded pictorial dust-jacket with no tears and modest shelf and edge wear; We have placed the dust-jacket in a protective, removable clear mylar cover; ....(The ... read more
Description: Very good. 2009 Walker and Company Softcover(Trade PB) Edition. Some wear/curling to cover, text clean with strong binding. Ships Fast! read more
Binding: Hardcover W/DUST JACKET
Publisher: Walker & Company
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9780802715357ISBN:0802715354
Description: VERY GOOD PLUS in VERY GOOD jacket. Very little reader or shelf wear; very little edge or corner wear; binding solid; no marks noted. Dust jacket has minor reader and shelf wear; minor edge and corner wear; front flap has creasing. 360 pages; notes; bibliography; index; B&W photos. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Walker & Company
Date Published: 2009
ISBN-13:9780802717429ISBN:080271742X
Description: New. No dust jacket as issued. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 372 p. Contains: Illustrations. Audience: General/trade. Brand new book, never used, 3rd printing read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9780747599227ISBN:074759922X
Description: Acceptable. Bumping to edges. Extensively read Internally Clean A usable copy. Please note that this book will show signs of wear and will have been extensively read but all pages will be in tact with it's binding secure unless stated. read more
"So it wasn't totally bad, but it never lived up to its hype either. The whoddunit part of the story was quite suspenceful, and even before that, the setup where you're introduced to this odd Victorian family, and you know something bad is about to happen (I was picturing a Rosemary's baby scenario leading up to a macare... ) - that part was good.
So here's the deal: the research was thorough, the writing - scientific, unimaginative and drowned in endless details. Not to mention the characters, which were rather underdeveloped; Mr. Whitcher especially.... And I understand, there's a trade-off - giving more insight into Witcher's personality would probably mean fictionalising the story a little, and this was supposed to be an authentic true-crime piece. But, in my humble opinion, if Summerscale left some of the dry data out and let her imagination go at times, the book would get much more likable and inviting."
"Very interesting book. Does a nice job of showing how authors of late 19th century England got fascinated by detectives and how this case influenced their detective fiction which in turn influenced the modern detective fiction. Lots of interesting period details and it shows how little people have changed. If you substituted blogs and Fox News for the tabloid papers and letters people wrote to the police, the hysteria and ignorance surrounding a crime in 1860 can still be seen in modern day media coverage."
"If you have read Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone, you have encountered, in the person of Sergeant Cuff, Detective-Inspector Jonathan Whicher of Scotland Yard. In other fiction of the period, you may well have found echoes of the murder case about which Ms. Summerscale writes.
In the early hours of June 29, 1860, in the country house of Road Hill, near Trowbridge, England, a three-year-old boy named Saville Kent was spirited from his crib and murdered, his body found the next day at the bottom of the privy. When, after two weeks, the local police were, as Sherlock Holmes would have said, "baffled", they called in Scotland Yard, which sent DI Whicher. All signs suggested that the murderer must have been someone resident in the house. Then, on July 20, Whicher convinced the local magistrates to issue a warrant for the arrest of Constance Kent, the child's half-sister. But after a hearing to determine whether there was sufficient evidence to charge her, Constance was released. On October 1, at the behest of a solicitor who headed a commission investigating the murder, the nursemaid, Elizabeth Gough, was arrested, but the upshot was the same.
The public was fascinated by the case, and everyone fancied himself Whicher's rival in detection. Fingers pointed at the nursemaid, at the child's half-siblings, even at the child's father. Theories suggested adultery and madness. Newspapers alternately and variously supported Inspector Whicher's actions and attacked them. And it would not be until years later, with a confession, that the murder would be solved (though, even then, questions arose as to the reliability or complete truthfulness of that confession).
Why did this case arouse so much interest, so much public passion and debate and involvement? There were many reasons. The crime itself struck at the most private, protected place of an Englishman: his home. The investigation necessitated prying into a family's intimate secrets, and, worse, that prying was done into an upper-middle-class family by a man of the working class. Detectives were something new in England, and the English weren't quite sure they liked the idea.
Summerscale's great strength here is the way she interweaves the story of the murder with threads about English society in 1860. It's a fascinating story in itself, but is made far more nuanced by the way in which Summerscale relates it to the developments in England at large. I will say that I have seen at least one review of this book that complains that has "too much detail", and doesn't read sufficiently like a story. Hello? It's non-fiction, people! Frankly, I was rather impressed at how Summerscale was able to incorporate what was, in effect, a study of societal mores into the discussion of the murder case, and still make the book flow like a good novel without jettisoning scholarship.
(A note on notes: this book was extensively researched and, while endnotes are given for each chapter, Summerscale has also indicated "main sources" for groups of chapters. My one criticism of these notes is that, rather than having numbered endnotes, there are simply page references with the beginning of a sentence quoted. What's wrong with a superscript number and a corresponding endnote ((though a footnote would be preferable))? I do not understand why editors expect readers to be constantly flipping to the back of a book to see if there's a note or notes. I don't know if this is generally a choice of the author or of the editors, but I wish it would stop.)"
"A true-crime murder mystery wrapped in its historical context. Saville Kent, a three-year old English child is missing; then found in an outhouse: suffocated, stabbed, with his throat slit. The bungling local police can't figure it out and Jack Whicher, one of the first London detectives is brought into the case.
Whicher figures it out, but his conclusion isn't supported by much evidence and the accused is let off. Whicher is soon hounded out of the police force, but five years later the accused confesses.
Kate Summerscale's work is a prodigious work of scholarship. She seems to have read every newspaper article and book on the subject. Beyond that, she incorporates all the Saville Kent case elements in all of the crime writing of the time and wraps it all in the social context of Victorian England. At the end of the book, she follows all of the main characters through the rest of their lives and provides a modern gloss on what might have been behind the problems in the Kent family.
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