I'm a very slow nonfiction reader. I probably don't pick up NF books as often as I should, and when I do I find I need to be somewhere quiet where I can concentrate to take in as much of the information as I can. I also tend to reread passages far more in NF works than in novels. In novels I might reread to savor an especially eloquent description, but with NF it's usually because I am feeling a little inundated with facts and am trying to keep things straight. But when faced with a book like Kate Summerscale's The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, which reads almost like fiction by the way, I think I can just let the story (facts and all) wash over me and soak in what I can.
I've only just started reading, but Summerscale grabs you right from the first page. She begins by giving a brief overview (without giving away the crime) of the period and some of the players. The murder was committed in an English country house in 1860 and caught the attention of the entire country. Detectives were a fairly new 'invention'. Detective-Inspector Jonathan Whicher (I wish a photo of him had survived, but none do) was one of the men who made up the newly formed force at Scotland Yard. This case was almost his undoing. This particular case and Whicher himself was the inspiration behind Wilkie Collins The Moonstone. This fact, and the fact that Summerscale models her book "on the country-house murder mystery, the form that the Road Hill case inspired" was what really drew me to the book. Just reading a few chapters convinces me this is probably going to be an even better read than I've already heard.
A little taste of Summerscale's writing and a peek at what I find so appealing to learn about:
"A Victorian detective was a secular substitute for a prophet or a priest. In a newly uncertain world, he offered science, conviction, stories that could organise the chaos. He turned brutal crimes -- the vestiges of the beast in man -- into intellectual puzzles. But after the investigation at Road Hill the image of the detective darkened. Many felt that Whicher's inquiries culminated in a violation of the middle-class home, an assault on privacy, a crime to match the murder he had been sent to solve. He exposed the corruptions within in the household: sexual transgression, emotional cruelty, scheming servants, wayward children, insanity, jealousy, loneliness and loathing. The scene uncovered aroused fear (and excitement) at the thought of what might be hiding behind the closed doors of other respectable houses. His conclusion helped to create an era of voyeurism and suspicion, in which the detective was a shadowy figure, a demon as well as a demi-god."
I can see why the Victorian era was so ripe for the sort of sensationalist fiction that Wilkie Collins and other authors excelled at writing (and no doubt titillated readers then and even still today).
So the scene has been set and I've been introduced to the players. I know what the crime is and what some of the facts are. I wonder if the perpetrator was ever caught? And I wonder if I'll be able to figure out just who it was based on the story/facts Summerscale reveals throughout the book. There's only one way to find out--I hope to read this one straight through.