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This non-fiction book, by Kate Summerscale, is about a terrible crime that took place in Victorian England. You may have noticed I’m a little sick of hearing about how wonderful Melbourne is so would you believe that even in a Victorian murder mystery book I came across the following:

He moved first to the southern city of Melbourne, the capital of Victoria, known in the 1880s as ‘Marvellous Melbourne’ and ‘the Paris of the Antipodes’.

The crime was the murder of a three year old boy named Saville Kent who came from a respectable middle-class family. A detective (still a bit of a novelty back then) by the name of Jonathon Whicher was sent by Scotland Yard to find out whodunnit

As for the suggestion ‘that he was improperly connected with the Nursemaid, there is not the slightest grounds for that suspicion, as she in the first place was not acquainted with him and in the next place I do not suppose she hardly ever spoke to him nor would condescend to speak to him in any way much more as an admirer, as she is rather a superior girl for her station in looks and demeanour, while on the other hand ‘Nutt’ is a slovenly dirty man, weakly, asthmatical, and lame’. (Whicher)

Whicher’s choice of murderer was an unpopular one and when the charges didn’t stick, people began questioning his integrity both as a detective and as a person. So it is also a story about a great detective’s fall from grace

This is an interesting and surprising book in which you will find snippets about pearl cultivation in the Torres Strait, somnambulism, the heartlessness of teenage girls, phrenology, and fern owls. If I have one gripe though it is that there were far too many quotes from Victorian novels. These hindered the flow and I’m surprised an editor didn’t cull them

This is a well researched and absorbing story. I read it in three nights because I was quite desperate to find out if it was Mrs Peacock or Professor Plum