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Whicher, including whicher in my blog, any mentions of whicher in my family tree and whicher in Folkestone.

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Susie Dent's coming to Folkestone

Sep20

Susie Dent of Countdown's "Dictionary Corner" is coming to Folkestone as part of Folkestone Literary Festival 2008. At least I hope it's the same Susie Dent. We watch Countdown every day on 40D, so this will be nice.

She has a regular publication called The Language Report, plus really squillions of other books. Would it be bad form for me to pick up some bargains from ABE and take them to get signed, rather than paying the full Waterstones RRP on the day? A signed Susie Dent is not going to instantly quintuple it's money like last week's Terry Pratchett did but they're nice to have anyway.

I've still not actually read the Roy Hattersley or Terry Jones books that I picked up last year, however I have nearly finished The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: or the Murder at Road Hill House (my impulse buy from our last trip to Canterbury, even cheaper now on Amazon, or there's a signed first edition for £45). I'm only a few pages away from also by the the same author, but I think there is still more to be revealed... It's been an interesting sort of book, an in depth study of a big important murder case that inspired the likes of Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It's a bit dry in places, and occasionally it feels like things were revealed in the wrong order - it is not a novel - but I'm sure things will come good. It won the BBC4 Samuel Johnson prize you know.

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The plot of a Christopher Brookmyre book

Sep1

OK so this story doesn't have a plot that we know of so far, but each bit of information that's eeked out of nowhere by the press leads the imagination in different directions, like a good book. Of course, this is not a book, these are people's lives and deaths but you know what I mean. I saw three papers on Sunday that had three different theories on the front pages, one that Russian hitmen were involved, one that the it was a kidnap plot gone wrong, and the last that the father of the house had done it himself. It's hard to know which is the preferable outcome. Gruesome, but quite gripping stuff. One thing I do wish is that the kids who are leaving messages of tribute on the dead / missing girl's Bebo page would stop the really stupid spelling:

I can't belive that one of the bodys was your mam. RIP Jill Foster. I hope that the other body isnt your dad.
An I hope they dont find any mor an your just havin a week somewer with your dad or sumink.
Please be okay, otherwise I dunno wat ill doo.
Plz b ok kirstie. We r all thinkin bowt u.

Maybe the spasticated writing gives the writer a sense of detachment, they can enter the cartoonish unthinking world of "boo i r sad" without having to write or think fully formed thoughts like "I'm sorry you're probably dead". Not that any of them had to write anything. Oh, neither did I.

On the topic of country house murders, I'm reading The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, it's the kind of book that gets written about major crimes and criminals like Jack the Ripper, but it's not a crime I was aware of. It's set in the mid nineteenth century, and there's a murder at a country house. It's a true story that seems to have been the basis for almost every detective story that was to follow, and the detective in this was a contemporary of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins.

Less about murder tomorrow, but if you haven't read any Christopher Brookmyre, then you should.