Reviews with content warning for Murder - The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime

Reviews tagging 'Murder'

The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime by Judith Flanders

9 reviews

aportraitinflesh's review against another edition

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dark emotional informative reflective tense medium-paced

4.0

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alstorey99's review against another edition

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challenging informative reflective slow-paced

3.0

I was very interested to see how we compare today in regards to viewing murders as people viewed it in the 1800s, and it made me very reflective on my own personal interests in crime, especially murders. However, I did feel at times I had to force myself to slog through and read it because there was so much information that just felt like it became repetitive. Which a lot of the views of the 1800 murders were. I felt as though the original point of the book got lost in the bulk of information that would be given to you. It was a fascinating book though.

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kaylo88's review against another edition

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dark informative slow-paced

2.0

I should have loved this book, it's topics—death, true crime, and history—should have resonated with me, but unfortunately, I found it to be quite dry and forgettable. The structure of the book, organised into case, trial, and media response, resulted in lengthy and repetitive chapters.

It was interesting to learn about how newspapers fabricated the truth and presented it as fact, a practice that still occurs to some extent today. Additionally, I have always been fascinated by penny dreadfuls so I enjoyed hearing more about them.

Regrettably, I struggled to connect with the author's writing style, which made it challenging for me to finish the book and I struggle to find anything more to say.

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apersonfromflorida's review against another edition

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challenging dark informative slow-paced

3.5

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goldenluck's review against another edition

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I feel so bad! The idea of this is so fascinating but... God, does this read like a series of Wikipedia novels on sinks. How do you make murder boring?? There's little discussion of the police -- not none, just little. The biggest focus is on how the murders are turned into plays and penny dreadfuls, but even those are described in a boring way! The narrator was a bit droning too. Maybe I'll return to it, but for now I have a book club to get to.

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