The Invention of Murder ... gird yourself for blood and gore

The details in this book could be the stuff of nightmares, but I found it endlessly interesting. The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime, by Judith Flanders contains tragic tale after tragic tale - some well known and others completely new to me - are woven together in an excellent narrative that tracks the treatment of murder and murderers through the Victorian era, by the legal profession, the press and the arts! I read this in audio which I'd downloaded from iTunes. The narration was calm and authoritative, which helped to keep the reader calm too, so thank you Janice McKenzie - you pitched it about right. Murder was rare in the 19th century, but when it did happen, it started to become sensationalised in broadsides, ballads, plays and novels.  In the early days, all it took to convict someone was gossip and a bad character reference - proof could be a bit thin on the ground - all that seemed to matter was that someone was convicted and punished for the crime. This was no joke when the penalty was death by hanging, and not all the hangmen were particularly skilled at their jobs. We follow the development of the police force, detectives and forensic medicine. But one of the most remarkable things is how these murders inspired people - Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins seemed to be following every big case. The Victorians seem to have been genuinely fascinated by the crime of murder, to the extent that the lines between fact and fiction no longer mattered. Some of the plots in some of the most famous tales of the era are inspired by real life murder cases - The Moonstone, The Sign of the Four, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Dracula (thank you Jack the Ripper) to name but a few. This is history at it's most accessible. Shocking in places, and hideously disturbing at other times but ultimately satisfying.



My STAR rating: FOUR

The stats: 556 print pages; I paid £5.95 (audio edition on iTunes); also available in print, ebook and audio CD.