Last Review: Whicher

Overall The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher was entertaining because...

I thought the history lessons about Poe/Dickens and the newspaper articles serve two purposes. First, it gave Summerscale creditability. As the reader, I trusted her. Whenever there is a narrator that is not the main character, it immediately makes me feel on edge to question… Who is this narrator to be telling a story that is not theirs? What type of relationship did this narrator have with main character(s) to be telling the story; therefore, should I trust what this narrator has to say? The history lends the author creditability that I could trust her. I understood that Summerscale knew how her story was going to end so she worked backward as opposed to working forward. Usually, an author works forward and the character(s) or plot take the author on an unknown journey; the author is a portal of some sort for characters to tell their story and it is only them that know where the finish line is so-to-speak. Summercale knew where the finish line was from the start. The history acts as filling for a gap she was trying to close. It also provided necessary information for Summerscale to do something that was very familiar in Victorian Literature;The constant references of Poe and Dickens or Whicher was a model for the author to draw from for the audience. I appreciated that even though, thanks to this class, I’ve read Poe, Doyle, and Collins.

Prior, to this class I had not read Doyle or Collins. My previous education on Poe was his grotesque tales such as The Fall House of Usher, The Cask of Amontillado or “The Raven”. I did not know that Poe was a pioneer for deductive fiction. So I can sympathize with the average Joe, who may know nothing about Victorian Literature and is simply reading this book for fun. Through that purpose, Joe gets educated on a significant genre that is part of Victorian Literature outside of the prime and proper world that Jane Austen presents. However, that is not to say that the constant references to Poe and Dickens becomes annoying and actually distracts to what the book is really about. The Book is about the murder of young Saville, yet Summeriscale names her book The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher. When really the book is about how Saville’s murder act as another model for other Victorians; the murder threatens the “supposed” domestic tranquility of the Victorian household. Everyone in the town is suddenly scared; their suspicious of what could or is going on in their household. By naming her book after Mr. Whicher Summerscale contradicts herself and confuses the reader. She confuses her reader on another front as well with the “supposed” killer Constance, Saville’s older sister. Later on in the book, the author tells the reader that it was either Constance or William, Saville’s older brother. Summercale could have done that at the beginning. It would have added more suspense to the book because for me this book was a merger between clue and cold case, and the history could have been an over layer to the story. However, Summerscale attempted to what I proposed as a fourth factor to defining detective fiction.

The author gave me a second hand version of stream of consciousness as way to enter the mentality of the killer, thereby by giving me more than just motive from an outsider’s perspective, who in this case is Mr. Whicher. When Whicher becomes certain that it is Constance, he goes to talk to a friend of Constance and ask her did Constance ever speak ill of her family. The friend says yes; then proceeds to quote Constance about her particular feelings on young Saville. This information made the story more so entertaining because Summerscale attempts close a gap that I believe Poe, Collins, and Doyle leaves open. It’s the perfect example of why that fourth factor is needed in defining detective fiction. The reader needs more than just the detective or others such as Dupin observing the criminals actions, and from that action drawing conclusions. The reader needs in-depth information coming from the criminal or someone who is close to the criminal about who they really are. I know I said in my last blog that this needs to be done where the detective is concern, but Summercale made it up to me by giving that extra something about Constance.