The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime

by Judith Flanders

Book Overview

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

"Wonderful... Flanders] shines in her readings of literary novels containing criminal and detective elements, such as Oliver Twist, Mary Barton and Tess of the D'Urbervilles, but can be sharp and very funny about the vagaries of melodramatic and sensational plotting." -Wall Street Journal

In this fascinating exploration of murder in the nineteenth century, Judith Flanders...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1250048532
• ISBN13: 9781250048530
• Release Date: July 2014
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
• Length: 576 Pages
• Weight: 1.13 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 5.4" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

3.5 for the debunking of Vidocq and credit to Colquhoun

Victorian pop culture through the lens of violent crime. Your mileage will vary depending upon how you feel about the author's voice (acceptable), your attachment to trivia that often debunks popular ideas (it's a trove), and your stomach for grisly historical mayhem (varies, but there is really a lot of it in here, and even with my interest in true crime, they ran together a bit.)