Starred Reviews for The Invention of Murder

You may remember THE INVENTION OF MURDER: How the Victorians
Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime by Judith Flanders as
Talia's #FridayRead back in April. Now that it's out it can be your (and your patrons') next #FridayRead (or #MondayRead or #WednesdayRead), too! In THE INVENTION OF MURDER Flanders retells the gruesome
stories of many different types of murder, both famous and obscure, and the
reviews were chillingly good!

"Judith Flanders's wonderful, sometimes appalling
THE INVENTION OF MURDER: How the Victorians Reveled in Death and
Detection and Created Modern Crime, is a guidebook to notably grisly
true-life tales. There are unsolved violent crimes, such as the Ratcliffe
Highway murders in 1811, in which a whole family (including a baby in his
cradle) was massacred in their house. There is the occasional murder of a
master by a servant—the most famous occurred in 1840, when the Swiss valet
Courvoisier slit the throat of the 73-year-old Lord William Russell. There's
the larger category of love gone wrong, including the tale of Maria Marten,
murdered in 1827 by a former lover and buried in a barn. [...] Yet murders
considered in themselves are merely Ms. Flanders's starting point for her real
interest: the Victorian public's growing taste for blood." —Wall Street
Journal

"Flanders’s convincing and smart synthesis of the
evolution of an official police force, fictional detectives, and real-life
cause célèbres will appeal to devotees of true crime and detective fiction
alike." —Publishers Weekly (starred review, Best New Books for the Week of
July 22, 2013)

"Brilliantly researched and rendered, this is an
indispensible read for anyone—scholars and the general public alike—who harbors
an interest in the evolution of the notion and representation of murder. [...]
Flanders presents a fascinating narrative in well-crafted and at times suitably
ironic praise." —Library Journal (starred review)

THE INVENTION OF MURDER is available now from St. Martin's
Press.