The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher

Summary

A meticulous reconstruction of the Road Hill House murder of 1860, in which a three-year-old boy was found killed in his own home and the detective sent to investigate — Jonathan Whicher of Scotland Yard — became as controversial a figure as the suspects he pursued. Summerscale uses the case to trace the emergence of the detective as a cultural type, showing how this single investigation directly inspired Dickens, Collins, and other Victorian writers who invented the modern crime novel. The book revived scholarly and popular interest in a case that had been largely forgotten, while raising enduring questions about the costs of detection.