A review by mokey81
The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime by Judith Flanders

2.0

I don't know...this book seemed right up my alley. I think I was expecting more variety. This was essentially a (detailed) police blotter of murders in Victorian England. So, it got a little tedious. I am super impressed by all the extensive research Flanders had to do in regards to crime, newspapers, theater, and fiction writing. I did learn a few interesting tidbits. But overall...it felt incredibly repetitive. And I feel like subtitling this about creating modern crime was barely touched on. The extreme majority of each chapter was a retelling of many murders and how they were received by the public. And then there would be just a tiny tidbit about the impact these crimes had on crime over all. I would have been much more interested to learn more about that. To say I skimmed the end of the book is probably an overstatement. I barely glanced at the pages and I moved looking to see if there would be some type of culmination - there wasn't. I'd pass on this one.