The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or the Murder at Road Hill House
Kate Summerscale
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. But they wake 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. But when Whicher reaches his shocking conclusion there is uproar and bewilderment...
Award History
1 wins · 2 total
| Award | Year | Result | Category / Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-FictionMajor | 2008 | Winner | Secondary source |
| Edgar Awards: Best Fact Crime | 2009 | Finalist | Official source |
Experimental book profileGenerated by GPT-5.4 nano · may contain inaccuracies
This is an unverified interpretation of the catalog description, offered as an opt-in discovery experiment—not as bibliographic fact.
01 Central figures
- Jack Whicher70%
02 Central places
- Road Hill House78%
Show lower-confidence suggestions
These suggestions did not meet the normal display threshold and are more likely to be wrong.
- Wiltshire55%
- Road40%
03 Suggested argument
No argument inferred with sufficient confidence.
04 Reading orientation
30 / 100 academicSerious trade
An estimate of intended readership and scholarly apparatus—not quality or importance.
Confidence percentages are the model's own estimates. Profile confidence: 62%.