“Scotland Yard has been called in.” Those authoritative words imply the renowned reputation of the London Metropolitan Police, first established in 1829 as the world’s first professional, centrally organized police department. The name, in case you were wondering, comes from the fact that its headquarters were built on a piece of land facing a small street called Great Scotland Yard.
Simon Read eloquently explains the force’s long-standing allure in his hard-to-put-down history, Scotland Yard: A History of the London Police Force’s Most Infamous Murder Cases. “It’s something woven into our cultural fabric,” Read writes, “a conduit between history and pop culture. We can trace today’s true crime obsession, in large part, to the Yard’s early cases with their sensational news coverage, in-depth narratives of criminal trials and the celebration of detectives.”
Read brings all of the gory details to life in 19 notable cases that span the course of a century, drawing from official case files, newspaper reportage, trial transcripts and detectives’ notes. His crisp, evocative prose gets right to the heart of the matter, which is usually bloody: foggy nights, a cavalcade of shady characters and a surprising number of dismembered bodies, many discovered in trunks. With chapter titles like “A Death in Duddlewick” and “A Murder in the Manor,” readers will be forgiven for feeling entertained by these grisly tales: Some cases read like Charles Dickens’ novels brought to life, and, in fact, Dickens modeled Bleak House’s Mademoiselle Hortense after Maria Manning, whose execution he witnessed in 1849.
Readers will delight in learning about the evolution of detective work and forensics. During the Jack the Ripper investigation, for instance, “sniffer dogs” were briefly deployed for the first time. “The Crumbles” chapter describes a house of horrors in which crime scene investigators began using rubber gloves (thank goodness!). Ballistics started playing a role in the 1927 murder of police constable George Gutteridge, with the press declaring that the murderers were “hanged by a microscope.”
Read’s previous titles include Human Game: The True Story of the ‘Great Escape’ Murders and the Hunt for the Gestapo Gunmen, and he has cemented his reputation for escorting readers through real-life, spine-tingling adventures with this volume. Modern crime fanatics will find themselves captivated by the enduring relevance and mystique of these Victorian-era crimes.
