THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Wonderful... Flanders shines in her readings of literary novels containing criminal and detective elements such as Oliver Twist Mary Barton and Tess of the DUrbervilles but can be sharp and very funny about the vagaries of melodramatic and sensational plotting. Wall Street Journal In this fascinating exploration of murder in the nineteenth century Judith Flanders examines some of the most gripping cases that captivated the Victorians and gave rise to the first detective fiction Murder in Britain in the nineteenth century was rare. But murder as sensation and entertainment became ubiquitous transformed into novels into broadsides and ballads into theatre and melodrama and operaeven into puppet shows and performing dogacts. Detective fiction and Englands new police force developed in parallel each imitating the otherthe pioneers of Scotland Yard gave rise to Dickenss Inspector Bucket the first fictional police detective who in turn influenced Sherlock Holmes and ultimately even P.D. James and Patricia Cornwell. In this fascinating book Judith Flanders retells the gruesome stories of many different types of murderboth famous and obscurefrom the crimes and myths of Sweeney Todd and Jack the Ripper to the tragedies of the murdered Marr family in Londons East End Burke and Hare and their bodysnatching business in Edinburgh and Greenacre who transported his dismembered fiance around town by omnibus. With an irresistible cast of swindlers forgers and poisoners the mad the bad and the dangerous to know The Invention of Murder is both a gripping tale of crime and punishment and history at its most readable. show more