Kate Summerscale
Kate Summerscale’s The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House (Bloomsbury, 2008) – hailed as “a classic” by John Le Carré – won the Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction in 2008, and has been storming the book charts this year. She also wrote the bestselling The Queen of Whale Cay, a biography of British power boat racer Betty ‘Joe’ Carstairs, winner of the 1998 Somerset Maugham award and shortlisted for the 1997 Whitbread Biography award.
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House is a study of the Constance Kent case and has been recognised for both its thoughtful re-examination of the murder and its portrait of Victorian life.
“Summerscale has constructed nothing less than a masterpiece… The Suspicions of Mr Whicher is at one and the same time a crime thriller, a sociological history, a biography and a fascinating essay on the nature of investigation… My shelves are stacked with books about crime, but none more satisfying than this,” enthused the Mail on Sunday’s Craig Brown. The New York Times Book Review shared his enthusiasm: “Summerscale smartly uses an energetic narrative voice and a suspenseful pace, among other novelistic devices, to make her factual material read with the urgency of a work of fiction. Summerscale accomplishes what modern genre authors hardly bother to do anymore, which is to use a murder investigation as a portal to a wider world. When put in historical context, every aspect of this case tells us something about mid-Victorian society…The author’s startling final twist both vindicates her fallen hero and advances an ‘aggressive’ attack on moral hypocrasy in his day and ours.”
Kate is also the former literary editor of the Telegraph and her writing has appeared in the Guardian and the Independent. She was a Booker Prize judge in 2001.
Alongside journalist Louise Carpenter, Kate will be creating a mysterious and intriguing happening to take place inside the wonderful Port Eliot House at this year’s festival.
www.mrwhicher.com
“Summerscale has produced not only a dazzling non-fiction thriller, but also an acute work of literary and social history.”
The Daily Express
Links:
- The Prince of Sleuths: The policeman investigating a horrific murder case in 1860 provided the template for the archetypal detective hero. Kate Summerscale tracks down the clues.
- Q&A with Kate Summerscale
Video:
Kate Summerscale on Book Zone:
A Richard and Judy book club discussing The Suspicions of Mr Whicher:
