THE SUSPICIONS OF MR. WHICHER
or The Murder of Road Hill House
By Kate Summerscale. Bloomsbury. 360 pages. £14.99
ISBN 978-0-74758-205-1
This is not a work of fiction, though its title and dust jacket suggest as much. Instead, it is a brilliantly written examination of one of the 19th century’s most notorious murders.
On June 29 1860, Samuel and Mary Kent awoke to find their beloved three-year-old son not in his bed. After a short search, his body was found in the servant’s outside privy with his throat cut. And so began a murder case which gripped the nation and was only resolved five years later when a former suspect voluntarily confessed to the killing. A prosperous, rural home had been invaded by an apparently motiveless violence, a cherubic child murdered, and the new breed of detectives seemed unsuccessful.
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