It is a summer's night in 1860. In an elegant detached Georgian house in the village of Road, Wiltshire, all is quiet. Behind shuttered windows the Kent family lies sound asleep. At some point after midnight a dog barks. The family wakes the next morning to a horrific discovery: an unimaginably gruesome murder has taken place in their home. The household reverberates with shock, not least because the guilty party is surely still among them. Jack Whicher of Scotland Yard, the most celebrated detective of his day, reaches Road Hill House a fortnight later. He faces an unenviable task: to solve a case in which the grieving family are the suspects. The murder provokes national hysteria. The thought of what might be festering behind the closed doors of respectable middle-class homes - scheming servants, rebellious children, insanity, jealousy, loneliness and loathing - arouses fear and a kind of excitement. But when Whicher reaches his shocking conclusion there is uproar and bewilderment. A true story that inspired a generation of writers such as Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle, this has all the hallmarks of the classic murder mystery - a body; a detective; a country house steeped in secrets. In The Suspicions of Mr Whicher Kate Summerscale untangles the facts behind this notorious case, bringing it back to vivid, extraordinary life.

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Reserved for the live swap at the Greenwich Meet up on 14th June

Never heard of this book before, but it looks like a good one, so I'm glad I was able to thieve it in the swap!

Had fun in Greenwich today, hope you're feeling better soon Giz-angel.

Took this 'home' to read on the train to/from my sister's graduation (congratulations Emlar!). Weirdly enough, Emlar was reading a copy of this book too! She wasn't impressed with it, wasn't keen on all the history and wanted more about the murder and the detection, but I enjoyed it. I found it interesting to see how detectives appeared and evolved during the 1800s, and the insight in to family life of that time was interesting too. The only annoying thing is that, with it being a true story, you never find out what actually happened, rather just what people say happened, or what the detectives thought happened.

Released into a box of free books, full of books I don't want to take with me on my move. Hope you enjoy reading it!