The detective novel has become an established and well-loved
genre that continues to grow, but there was a time before
there were detectives, before there was an organized police
force, and before the sensational murders of Jack the Ripper
changed the face of murder.
Judith Flanders delves into Victorian society's fascination
with death and detection in THE INVENTION OF MURDER by
building the history of crime and punishment, and how the
entertainment industry feeds off those gruesome acts, to
reveal how murder became art. From Charles Dickens's first
ever fictional police detective to Sherlock Holmes, the
detective has indeed worn many hats. Each one reflects the
ever shifting view of Victorian society towards those
employed to police the people and with the new
understandings of science and technology.
Even after all these years, the real-life murders and
injustices are heartbreaking. Flanders's writes with
compassion about the historical victims, showing their death
and the injustice in stark fact. There were times I had to
put the book down and walk away because it was painful to
read. Flanders captures the horror of death and the use of
that death for sensational profit with clarity. Always
compelling, the cases and the nature of the violence weighs
on the mind and soul. She balances this with a sense of
irony and dry wit when discussing plot points for penny-
dreadfuls.
This book is really quite humorous despite the
rather bloody subject matter. History, in Flanders's hands,
is fun to read. The flow from real-life crimes to how they
influenced novels, plays, penny-bloods, and poetry pulls the
reader through the Victorian era in an engaging and thought-
provoking journey. People are fascinated by crimes. They're
fascinated by criminals. They're fascinated with death.
Judith Flanders captures this fascination because she
understands people. She doesn't simply study history, but
studies the people and continues to see them as people
rather than a shadow of the past.
Fascinating, engaging, and thought-provoking THE INVENTION
OF MURDER by Judith Flanders is a brilliant look into the
birth of the detective novel by studying the real-life
crimes that inspired Victorian writers and how this new form
of detection changed the nature of murder by making it an
art. I highly recommend THE INVENTION OF MURDER if you're a
lover of history, the detective novel genre, and Victorian
society.
In this fascinating exploration of murder in the nineteenth
century, Judith Flanders examines some of the most gripping
cases that captivated the Victorians and gave rise to the
first detective fiction
Murder in the nineteenth century was rare. But murder as
sensation and entertainment became ubiquitous, with
cold-blooded killings transformed into novels, broadsides,
ballads, opera, and melodrama—even into puppet shows and
performing dog-acts. Detective fiction and the new police
force developed in parallel, each imitating the other—the
founders of Scotland Yard gave rise to Dickens's Inspector
Bucket, the first fictional police detective, who in turn
influenced Sherlock Holmes and, ultimately, even P.D. James
and Patricia Cornwell.
In this meticulously
researched and engrossing book, Judith Flanders retells
the gruesome stories of many different types of murder, both
famous and obscure: from Greenacre, who transported his
dismembered fiancée around town by omnibus, to Burke and
Hare’s bodysnatching business in Edinburgh; from the crimes
(and myths) of Sweeney Todd and Jack the Ripper, to the
tragedy of the murdered Marr family in London’s East
End. Through these stories of murder—from the brutal
to the pathetic—Flanders builds a rich and multi-faceted
portrait of Victorian society. With an irresistible
cast of swindlers, forgers, and poisoners, the mad, the bad
and the utterly dangerous, The Invention of Murder is
both a mesmerizing tale of crime and punishment, and history
at its most readable.
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