It is a summer's night in 1860. In an elegant detached Georgian house in the village of Road, Wiltshire, all is quiet. Behind shuttered windows the Kent family lies sound asleep. At some point after midnight a dog barks. The family wakes the next morning to a horrific discovery: an unimaginably gruesome murder has taken place in their home. The household reverberates with shock, not least because the guilty party is surely still among them. Jack Whicher of Scotland Yard, the most celebrated detective of his day, reaches Road Hill House a fortnight later. He faces an unenviable task: to solve a case in which the grieving family are the suspects. The murder provokes national hysteria. The thought of what might be festering behind the closed doors of respectable middle-class homes - scheming servants, rebellious children, insanity, jealousy, loneliness and loathing - arouses fear and a kind of excitement. But when Whicher reaches his shocking conclusion there is uproar and bewilderment. A true story that inspired a generation of writers such as Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle, this has all the hallmarks of the classic murder mystery - a body, a detective, a country house steeped in secrets. In The Suspicions of Mr Whicher Kate Summerscale untangles the facts behind this notorious case, bringing it back to vivid, extraordinary life.

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_______________A beautiful new limited edition paperback of The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, published as part of the Bloomsbury Modern Classics list_______________WINNER OF THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE FOR NON-FICTIONTHE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLERA RICHARD AND JUDY BOOK CLUB PICK_______________'A remarkable achievement' - Sunday Times'A classic, to my mind, of the finest documentary writing' - John le Carr 'Absolutely riveting' - Sarah Waters, Guardian_______________On a summer's morning in 1860, the Kent family awakes in their elegant Wiltshire home to a terrible discovery; their youngest son has been brutally murdered. When celebrated detective Jack Whicher is summoned from Scotland Yard he faces the unenviable task of identifying the killer when the grieving family are the suspects.The original Victorian whodunnit, the murder and its investigation provoked national hysteria at the thought of what might be festering behind the locked doors of respectable homes scheming servants, rebellious children, insanity, jealousy, loneliness and loathing._______________'Nothing less than a masterpiece' - Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday'Terrific' - Ian Rankin'A triumph' - Observer'Gripping, unputdownable' - Sunday Telegraph'A terrific read in the Wilkie Collins tradition' - Susan Hill'The best whodunnit of the year - and it's all true ... Agatha Christie, eat your heart out' - Sebastian Shakespeare, Tatler