UBC: Beran, Murder by Candlelight

Murder by Candlelight: The Gruesome Slayings Behind Our Romance with the Macabre by Michael Knox Beran

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


So on the one hand this is a engaging and well-written discussion of (1) the murder of William Weare by John Thurtell, (2) the murder of Hannah Brown by James Greenacre, (3) the murder of Lord William Russell by Francois Courvoisier, and (4) the murders of the Marrs and the Williamsons by person or persons unknown.

On the other hand,

(1) The style is distinctly breezy, just barely this side of callous.
(2) Beran is possessed of a sort of more-recondite-than-thou hipsterism which I found intensely annoying.
(3) He is gratuitously disparaging of detective fiction, and when he swings his stick at Dorothy Sayers, is clearly completely unaware of the fact that she was a theologian.
(4) What he really wants to talk about is Thomas Carlyle and Thomas de Quincey.
(5) He quotes William Roughead's judgment of de Quincey, "that he resembled the character in Scott's The Antiquary, Sir Arthur Wardour, who disdained a 'pettifogging intimacy with dates, names, and trifling matters of fact," a 'tiresome and frivolous accuracy of memory'" (194), without seeming to be aware that it is also a judgment on himself.

So if you're interested in Carlyle and de Quincey and want what amounts to an extended--and, give credit where credit is due, entertaining--footnote on their works, this is by all means the book for you. If not, I think I would recommend other works on these same murders first: Judith Flanders, The Invention of Murder, James & Critchley, The Maul and the Pear Tree, Borowitz, The Thurtell-Hunt Murder Case.



View all my reviews

comments