A review by bottomofthebookshelf
Death at the Priory: Love, Sex, and Murder in Victorian England by James Ruddick

2.0

Wow, never has it taken me so long to finish 200 pages. Let me start by saying that I thought this was a fiction novel written as non-fiction, but turns out it’s just a not-very-interesting true crime tale. I have to admit that the first half wasn’t super terrible, as I couldn’t wait to read about Charles dying (he deserved it). But the characters were still uninteresting to me and I didn’t really care to find out who committed the crime. Then the second half was just so bad. Suddenly going from telling the story from a narrative perspective to talking about research killed the flow of the book for me. I went from being uninterested in the story, to actively wanting to DNF the book. On top of the writing style being odd in the second half, the author dismissed certain facts in ways that didn’t make sense to me. The way he would seemingly rule someone out as a suspect, then bring them back up later with more evidence was also odd to me. I felt like I was getting whiplash from all the theories. The cherry on top for me was the end that dragged out after we find out who he thinks the murderer is. I’m sorry, but I didn’t find it necessary to list when the physicians that treated Charles died or where everyone was buried. All in all, I do not recommend this book even if you typically like true crime.