A very British murder
This is an interesting chronological account of the reasons for the British fascination with crime and murder from the 1800s to the second world war. In its time, public hangings for a variety of crimes not just murder provided entertainment for the masses. Journalists provided very gory details of how the murders were investigated and the culprits were apprehended, long before there were police officers and detective inspectors.
Included in the history are celebrated murder mystery writers such as Wilkie Collin’s, Agatha Christie, Ngao Marsh, Dorothy Sayers, Arthur Conan Doyle. ( )

This book is a tour of the evolution of detective fiction in Britain, letting the reader catch glimpses of the evolution of society and attitudes towards criminals, literary history and true crime.

We start of in a rather sarcastic manner, as the author introduces “the business of enjoying a murder. And a large-scale, profitable and commercial business it was, too.” This business and the “art” of murder are reflections of society’s darkness, of course.

There were lots of facts and details that I enjoyed learning about very much (despite the horrific true crime stuff). In the 19th century, you could tour the places where (in)famous crimes had been committed and buy rather gruesome souvenirs. I had heard of “Penny Dreadfuls”, but not their predecessors, “Penny Bloods”. Apparently, Edward Bulwer-Lyton of the “it was a dark and stormy night” fame began his career by writing those. Etc, etc, etc…

Female detectives in fiction appeared much earlier than I thought. 1841! Can you imagine!? There were also several books published in 1860’s that featured female detectives (and some lovely moments of emancipation). So cool!

It was also very enjoyable to read about the “Golden Age” of detective stories, about its appeal and the stories’ flaws. It reminded me of authors I used to enjoy (G.K. Chesterton) and authors that did not impress, yet I wondered if I should give them another chance (Dorothy L. Sayers).

The detractors of detective fiction have a point, of course, in satirising “the business of enjoying a murder”. Yet what is a detective story, really? It is seeing the order being restored in the world; seeing the triumph of good over evil. Isn’t this the most comforting genre imaginable?
( )

This is the second of this author's works I have read. She has an easy to read style with a slight quirkiness, reminiscent of her presentation style on TV. I haven't seen the TV programme/series on which this book was based, but can envisage it from the structure of this book and the general style in which it comes across.

I was surprised initially by the fact that the first few chapters were about real life murders a couple of centuries ago and the reporting of such in the news sheets of the day, rather than the literary treatment of the subject. But that soon started to interweave with the factual material in the narrative. The author's theme is that the British came to 'consume' the subject of murder for entertainment, initially in cheap broadsheets, and later on in Penny Bloods and Penny Dreadfuls, cheap forerunners of the paperback of the 20th century. The growth of literacy in the 19th century led to a pulpish, sensational style of literature for the working masses. Initially there was also a theatrical style of entertainment - the melodrama - with its overacting and dramatic makeup, intended to make the actor's facial expressions visible to packed audiences in large auditoriums. Such plays often took for their subject matter the celebrated murders of the day, such as the Murder in the Red Barn, but this style of drama gradually gave way to a more highbrow theatre clientele, as the book explains, leading the less well off to attend the music halls instead. These were venues for light entertainment, so literature, in the form of Penny Bloods/Dreadfuls and the 'sensation' novel were left to provide people with their murder 'entertainment'.

An interesting point made by the author was that the unsolved 'Jack the Ripper' murders followed close on the opening of a stage adaptation of Robert Louis Stephenson's Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde. She suggests that the subsequent theories about the crimes, which focus on privileged members of society, such as the Duke of Clarence, instead of considering that the perpretrator was a working class man native to the area, stem from perceptions originating from this drama which caused a huge sensation at the time.

I had previously read about some of the celebrated cases covered - the murders on the Ratcliffe Highway and the Red Barn and the one which formed the subject of 'The Suspicions of Mr Whicher' - but the author also draws upon cases now less known, and describes the development of the police force and crime investigation. After discussion of Arthur Conan Doyle's, Charles Dickens' and Wilkie Collins' contributions to the fictional portrayal of detectives, the book considers the Four Queens of Crime of the interwar period, which has become known as the Golden Age of crime fiction. Of those, I have read only Agatha Christie, as the upper class sleuths in the works of Dorothy L Sayers, for instance, have never appealed. Detective fiction at this time championed the type of story which has now become known as 'cosy crime', although the author never calls it this, investigated by private and/or amateur sleuths. The book concludes with the decline of this type of crime fiction and its replacement by hard boiled stories by the likes of Raymond Chandler in the USA, and thriller writers such as Ian Fleming.

I enjoyed the book though there are some odd omissions, such as there being no mention of Edgar Alan Poe's 'The Murders in the Rue Morge', during the discussion of what constituted the earliest detective fictional work. First published in 1841, that story preceded the portrayals in Dickens' and Collins' works by over ten years, and is generally considered to be the first modern detective story. Similarly, when dealing with techonological progress in crime fighting, the development of telegraphy is not mentioned, even though it was responsible for the capture of the notorious Dr Crippen, who again is not mentioned. Also, the writer does unfortunately include 'spoilers' about certain fictional works - luckily, I had already read some of those but that wasn't always the case.

There are some useful sources mentioned for further reading and the author does acknowledge her debt to earlier writers about crime fiction. I would certainly like to follow up some of these references. But given the slightly uneven treatment of the subject, I would rate the book as an enjoyable 3 star read. ( )

The subtitle on my book says "The curious story of how crime was turned into art", while LT's subtitle is "The story of a national obsession". Either fits, as this is historian Worsley's study of infamous British murders that caught the public attention, making both victim and murderer famous.
Worsley discusses famous cases such as the Red Barn Murder and the Madeleine Smith poisoning, and the formation of the Metropolitan Police and rise of crime detectives such as Mr. Wicher. And she discusses how death or murder became a form of entertainment, whether it was the real public executions or detective novels. ( )

Lucy Worsley looks at murder as entertainment through true crime and fiction from Thomas De Quincey's 1827 essay on the public reaction to the Ratcliffe Highway Murders in 1811 to the shift from the puzzles of Golden Age fiction to the more noir-ish post WWII scene.

Fascinating, though I wish she'd carried on up to the present and there were some parts where it was a little too obvious this was the book of the TV series rather than something that stood on its own merits. So, I may well watch the series, which appears to be available on YouTube. ( )