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graveyardgremlin (7194 KP) rated The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective in Books

Feb 15, 2019  
TS
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective
Kate Summerscale | 2008 | Fiction & Poetry
4
5.3 (3 Ratings)
Book Rating
The Disappointing Mr. Whicher...or is it the Wandering Ms. Summerscale? No, I've got it! The Bloated Book of Everything Victorian!

I was looking forward to reading, what I thought was, a true crime book with a bit of a look into Mr. Whicher's professional life too. What I got instead was four, possibly more, books in a 304 page book. These four parts consist of the murder of Saville Kent, Mr. Jonathan Whicher himself, an analysis of detective fiction (especially Poe, Dickens, and Collins), the origin of words and phrases in the detection field, many murder/crime stories of the day, other oddly inserted facts and history, etc., etc.

Now, Ms. Summerscale is a fine writer (and researcher for that matter), but it seems as if she wrote for herself instead of us, the readers. While her odd bits and pieces of history are interesting (usually), they are not essential to the plot (or what I thought was the main story), and I found myself glazing quite a bit. Whenever she rhapsodized poetic about Poe, Dickens or any of the other writers of the early detection mystery, it had the overall feel of a research paper and usually didn't have much to do with the murder in the least. The author wandered off way too many times to her own fancy and whenever she went back to the supposed case, it felt as if she had forgotten that she was supposed to be writing about the murder. This left the plotting of the book oddly pieced together and me discombobulated. Where was the editor? Out to lunch? Or did the author disregard what the editor(s) advised her to do? Who knows, but all this extraneous information was just filler and added nothing to the book. I cannot believe this actually won anything. Another quibble was that she also had a bit of a problem with her 'sensationalistic' chapter endings; they just didn't go (or flow) with the whole book.

My biggest problem with the whole book is there isn't much on the murder, which you would think there would be by the cover, synopsis, praise, and marketing. Only a little speculation is spared on a few other suspects; no why might they have done it, how the family may have felt - I wish there had been more focused on the murder and less on everything else. That's why I picked up the book, I wanted to know about the crime and consequences, not on the way of Victorian life or how it influenced writers, there are other books for that (which are listed in the notes and select bibliography in the back I might add). Now, don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the subject content, but the overall construction of the book with all the un-necessary passages left me dissatisfied and grumpy.
  
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Eleanor (1463 KP) rated Unnatural Causes: The Life and Many Deaths of Britain's Top Forensic Pathologist in Books

May 28, 2019  
Unnatural Causes: The Life and Many Deaths of Britain's Top Forensic Pathologist
Unnatural Causes: The Life and Many Deaths of Britain's Top Forensic Pathologist
Richard Shepherd | 2017 | Biography, Crime
9
8.2 (6 Ratings)
Book Rating
A detailed look into the world of forensic pathology.
I don’t read a lot on non-fiction and when I do it is rarely an autobiography or memoir but when I happened to see Unnatural Causes I decided to jump in and hopefully get a better understanding of a profession so often touched on in my beloved crime thriller books. I didn’t regret it for a second.

Dr Richard Shepherd, as one of the UK’s top forensic pathologists, has performed over 23,000 postmortems; that’s a lot of dead bodies! Fascinated by cracking the puzzle of what killed each one this book covers a whole host of unusual cases. Clearing up many misconceptions of the world of forensic pathology we get a great insight into a job few people could stomach.

As he covers many interesting cases we get a unique behind the curtain look into some famous murders and disasters. Shipman, Stephen Lawrence, the Hungerford massacre, the Marchioness disaster, he is even involved in Diana’s inquest. The look into the very difficult area of the death of babies shows a complicated area where everything is not as black and white as we’d like it to be.

His single minded quest for the truth and the very distressing nature of his work takes a toll on his mental health and family life. Although not as fascinating as the cases themselves it’s important to cover this, bring into sharp focus the debt society owes to those willing to surround themselves in such a grim profession.