The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher

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The dramatic story of a real-life murder that inspired modern detective fiction unfolds in June 1860 when three-year-old Saville Kent was discovered at the bottom of an outdoor privy with his throat slit. This horrific crime shocked England and ignited a national obsession with detection, ultimately undermining the career of one of the greatest detectives of the time. At this point, the detective was a novel concept, with only eight in all of England, and rarely called beyond London. However, the shocking nature of the crime prompted Scotland Yard to dispatch its best investigator, Inspector Jonathan Whicher. Whicher quickly suspected that the murderer was someone within the family, but lacking sufficient evidence or a confession, he returned to London defeated. Although he would be vindicated five years later, Whicher's true legacy lies in the fictional detectives that emerged from his story—tough, quirky, and all-seeing figures like Sgt. Cuff in Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone and Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade. This provocative nonfiction work reads like a Victorian thriller, with a brilliantly layered narrative that is both cleverly constructed and beautifully written.