When is a hawk like a handsaw? When is a murder really a murder? And how can it be that some secrets go the grave with their keepers? Some of these questions are relevant to this book, which has the alternative title of 'The Murder At Road Hill House'. In 1860 a child was murdered, bloodily, and the culprit not satisfactorily detected although his half-sister and half-brother were suspected, as was his governess. The case became a media frenzy, drawing attention upon the relatively new detective policemen in operation and their methods and galvanising what had been the conventions of sensational fiction at the time into the more rigid and less destructive detective fiction which had only been pioneered by Poe in 1841. Five years later the half-sister confessed and the furore subsided but there were holes and doubts remained thereafter. This book is that story, with all its framings, consequences and speculations attached.
When reading a historical crime narrative it becomes hard to categorise what it is we're reading. This is no novel, nor does it pretend to be. It can be called a historical text, albeit it a rather populist one or a group biography as it has those trappings, or even an organised scrap book of all the things connected to the case, or a narrative on the formation of detective fiction seen through the lens of Road Hill. I think that perhaps that is the problem I have with this book: It's trapped between rocks, hard places, beaches and sandy coves. The detective fiction aspect is fascinating, as are the references to Dickens and his close examination of detectives and their methods. Things pop out that I hadn't considered previously. There was a time when witnesses were believed to the extent that physical evidence was of a low priority. Confessed criminals might be asked to sign the charge that was being levelled at them, and syphilis was rife in an era where people didn't know enough to protect those close to them. It was a strange time indeed. Taken all together the historical portions of the novels, and analyses of how things worked and what kinds of things happened, work for me. It's the biography that I don't like. Much as portraits have no appeal to me, nor do histories of people.
Writing about a book is harder than writing about a movie. It's a more intellectual process. As I sit here, it almost seems futile. I think some 'Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea' is necessary to counterbalance the intellectual trauma. Go Nelson!
In any murder, the human element is the most distressing and is the part that people get past to enjoy the mystery. Someone is killed, again bloodily, and someone kills. Perhaps some people get separate themselves from such things better than I but it's very uncomfortable to think about the people who could have done such things, their reasons, and their possible insanities. In the end, maybe Constance Kent didn't kill her half-brother but we will never know. Maybe she was covering for someone else. Maybe her family was horribly abusive and scarred with numerous child deaths and stillbirths due to a negligent syphilitic. It's all so tawdry and that's thematically where the book begins and I end, in the crudeness of it all. The newly formed detective forces were disapproved of and feared by the public, whose homes were inviolable and had been in living memory, and now there were spies. Spies who in unusual circumstances could get permission to investigate and poke their noses into mysteries and murders. It was a turbulent time and we have a lot to thank those brave early pioneer detectives for.
It's a well written book, excellently researched, and with a well established narrative that touches on many different aspects of history and biography. I find biography dull but maybe you wouldn't.
O.
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