Take a photo of a barcode or cover
mwgerard 's review for:
The Wicked Boy: The Mystery of a Victorian Child Murderer
by Kate Summerscale
I think this is Summerscale’s best to date. I devoured this one in less than 24 hours.
Two normal boys, not yet in their teens, play at truancy and go to Lord’s Cricket Grounds to watch a match. Harmless fun, really. The elder brother has just aged out of the mandatory school age anyway.
What’s peculiar is their sudden (relative) wealth and lack of adult supervision — at any point. After several days, the body of their mother is discovered in the front bedroom upstairs, mutilated and covered with a sheet. The boys are instantly suspected and arrested. The book follows their trials and their later lives.
Summerscale pulls in not just trial transcripts and newspaper articles; she dusts off witness statements from old police files and finds copies of long forgotten penny dreadfuls that were seized in the arrest.
Please read my entire review here: http://mwgerard.com/review-the-wicked-boy/
Two normal boys, not yet in their teens, play at truancy and go to Lord’s Cricket Grounds to watch a match. Harmless fun, really. The elder brother has just aged out of the mandatory school age anyway.
What’s peculiar is their sudden (relative) wealth and lack of adult supervision — at any point. After several days, the body of their mother is discovered in the front bedroom upstairs, mutilated and covered with a sheet. The boys are instantly suspected and arrested. The book follows their trials and their later lives.
Summerscale pulls in not just trial transcripts and newspaper articles; she dusts off witness statements from old police files and finds copies of long forgotten penny dreadfuls that were seized in the arrest.
Please read my entire review here: http://mwgerard.com/review-the-wicked-boy/