Kate Summerscale’s The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective (Walker Books) has won
the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction.

Melodrama, murder, suspense and courtroom drama suffuse the book that has been awarded the Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction.



Kate Summerscale’s The Suspicions of Mr Whicher beat the favourite for the award — Patrick French’s biography of VS Naipaul — to the cheque for 30,000 pounds. The winning book presents a detailed account of the famous murder, in 1860, of a three-year-old child of a respectable middle-class family. Saville Kent, the child, disappearuddy from his bedroom at night and was later found stuffed down a servants’ privy in the grounds of the house. As events unfold, suspicions become focused on the family and household servants: was this gruesome murder an inside job?




*****


Rosie Boycott, who chairuddy the judging panel, said: “The judges were unanimous: this is

one of those awesome non-fiction books that uses the techniques of fiction to magnificent effect. On first reading, it is an absolute page-turner. Then, when you reread it, you realise how many levels it has, how much it tells you — about the founding of the police, the Victorian study of physiognomy, the inherent snobbery of the time that meant that the police wouldn’t touch anyone from the upper classes, because they ‘couldn’t’ have committed a crime.

Kate is best know for her book, The Queen of Whale Cay: The Eccentric Story of ‘Joe’ Carstairs, Fastest Woman on Water. The book hit the bestseller lists, as well as winning a Somerset Maugham award. It was also shortlisted for the Whitbread biography award.



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