Bee Wilson writes:

Summerscale’s own narrative is profoundly absorbing, but for different reasons. In her introduction, she claims that the book is modelled on the country-house murder mystery. In fact, it is something altogether more interesting. In the classic murder mystery, everything leads up to the disclosure of the villain. Absolution comes after this and the mystery is cleared up. In The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, by contrast, the reader is aware of the probable perpetrator from very early on. The tension – which is considerable – comes not from simple disclosure of an act, but from cumulative insights into the singular household at Road Hill, in which one mystery leads to another and all motivations are complicated. We are not running out of the labyrinth, but stopping and getting to know the Minotaur.

(LRB 19 June 2008)

Bloomsbury | hardback 334 pp. |ISBN: 9780747582151