Murder by the Book: The Crime That Shocked Dickens’s London - Claire Harman

Written by Claire Harman
Read by Andy Secombe
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
Release date: March 26, 2019
Duration: 07:44:53

From the acclaimed biographer—the fascinating, little-known story of a Victorian-era murder that rocked literary London, leading Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, and Queen Victoria herself to wonder: Can a novel kill?

In May 1840, Lord William Russell, well known in London’s highest social circles, was found with his throat cut. The brutal murder had the whole city talking. The police suspected Russell’s valet, Courvoisier, but the evidence was weak.

The missing clue, it turned out, lay in the unlikeliest place: what Courvoisier had been reading. In the years just before the murder, new printing methods had made books cheap and abundant, the novel form was on the rise, and suddenly everyone was reading. The best-selling titles were the most sensational true-crime stories. Even Dickens and Thackeray, both at the beginning of their careers, fell under the spell of these tales—Dickens publicly admiring them, Thackeray rejecting them.

One such phenomenon was William Harrison Ainsworth’s Jack Sheppard, the story of an unrepentant criminal who escaped the gallows time and again. When Lord William’s murderer finally confessed his guilt, he would cite this novel in his defense. Murder By the Book combines this thrilling true-crime story with an illuminating account of the rise of the novel form and the battle for its early soul among the most famous writers of the time. It is superbly researched, vividly written, and captivating from first to last.

Narrator Andy Secombe presents this mixture of true crime and literary history set in Victorian England as if he were performing a novel. The story begins with one of the most sensational murders of 1840s England. Lord William Russell was murdered in his bed, his throat slashed so deeply that his head was almost severed from his neck. Secombe does his best to keep things lively, but Harman’s research takes too many literary sidetracks, including books and plays focused on criminals and a debate as to whether the glorification of criminals in literary works encourages violence among readers. Harman offers a plot-heavy tale with a frequently shifting focus, leaving listeners unclear about its original purpose, but Secombe’s bright, energetic delivery is a win. S.J.H. � AudioFile 2019,