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A review by primalmusic
The Wicked Boy: The Mystery of a Victorian Child Murderer by Kate Summerscale
2.0
First of all, I have to applaud Kate Summerscale for what seems to be an intimidating amount of research to put this book together. She weaves together her sources nicely to give the best depiction possible of Robert Coombes' life, from murdering his mother on through adulthood.
Unfortunately, there just isn't a lot of material available. I was hoping that Summerscale would explore Coombes' motivations and personality, but she just presents popular theories of the time (mental illness on his part and/or his mother's, abuse, the sinister influence of penny dreadfuls) without doing much to interpret the possibilities. She struck me as a bit too eager to believe Robert and Nattie's testimony.
Following Robert's trial, much of the book becomes about contextualizing his life in the asylum and beyond. I appreciate Summerscale providing enough history for us to understand how Robert fit into his new life, but there are so many examples that are only tangentially related to the Coombes case that it feels like Summerscale may have been padding out the story to make it book length. It was only toward the end when Summerscale struck upon a human connection to Robert that I began to care again. If you're a fan of history/true crime that's based on newspapers/paper records and little else, you may find this work intriguing, but for me, it was far too dry.
I received a galley from Penguin's First to Read program in exchange for my honest review.
Unfortunately, there just isn't a lot of material available. I was hoping that Summerscale would explore Coombes' motivations and personality, but she just presents popular theories of the time (mental illness on his part and/or his mother's, abuse, the sinister influence of penny dreadfuls) without doing much to interpret the possibilities. She struck me as a bit too eager to believe Robert and Nattie's testimony.
Following Robert's trial, much of the book becomes about contextualizing his life in the asylum and beyond. I appreciate Summerscale providing enough history for us to understand how Robert fit into his new life, but there are so many examples that are only tangentially related to the Coombes case that it feels like Summerscale may have been padding out the story to make it book length. It was only toward the end when Summerscale struck upon a human connection to Robert that I began to care again. If you're a fan of history/true crime that's based on newspapers/paper records and little else, you may find this work intriguing, but for me, it was far too dry.
I received a galley from Penguin's First to Read program in exchange for my honest review.