REVIEW: THE WICKED BOY by Kate Summerscale

I think this is Summerscale’s best to date. I devoured this one in less than 24 hours. Two normal boys, not yet in their teens, play at truancy and go to Lord’s Cricket Grounds to watch a match. Harmless fun, really. The elder brother has just aged out of the mandatory school age anyway. What’s peculiar…

REVIEW: DID SHE KILL HIM?

Stuck in the airport? Stuck with the in-laws? Feeling a bit murderous? Escape with this engrossing true (mainly unsolved) crime from Victorian England, with its roots in the American South. Florence Chandler, every inch the southern belle, took a steamer from New York to Liverpool in 1880. Her gold-digging mother planned to shop her on the…

REVIEW: INVENTION OF MURDER by Judith Flanders

Despite the title, this delightful tome is nearly 500 pages of salacious details of crime and murder in Victorian England — plus almost 100 pages of notes, bibliography and index.  For someone like me, it’s a treasure trove of the ignoble and infamous.  I admit, I got a little giddy when the book arrived. It…