Saint - With Red Hands by Y Bridges and The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or the murder at Road Hill House by Kate Summerscale

Saint - With Red Hands by Y Bridges (1954)
Read: November 2009
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or the murder at Road Hill House by Kate Summerscale (2008)
Read: November-December 2009

I was bought a copy of The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by a friend as it had been Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4 earlier in the year and part of the Richard and Judy Bookclub - my friend and parents had read it and thought it was a good book. My father disagreed though and found me a copy of Saint - With Red Hands which tells the same story, but was written 50 years earlier, that he felt was a much better portrayal of the story.

The story is of the Kent family in the 1860's and the murder of their second youngest child. The young boy was murdered overnight when the family and a few trusted maids were in the house. The house was locked from the inside with no sign of a break-in and the case caused a lot of media interest and a lot of amateur sleuths to speculate as to the method, means and motivation of the murder. Both books cover the story of the family from the day the murder was discovered, to the cases' "conclusion" when a suspect is convicted years later. They dip into previous events in the family that may have contributed toward the motive, and also cover the story of Mr Whicher, the detective assigned to the case.

I read Saint - With Red Hands first and then waited about a month before reading The Suspicions of Mr Whicher. I wanted to leave a little gap, but not too long that I would totally forget the first book and thus be unable to compare them. It's hard to say whether I enjoyed one more than another as they had slightly different focuses and structures.
With Red Hands, for example examined the case chronologically starting with the day before the murder and then dealt with each event as it happened. Suspicions on the other hand only dealt with events in the order they were brought to the authorities attention. This meant details about a missing nightdress were given to the reader in a different order. In this respect I preferred With Red Hands as I could sleuth and make my own theories as I went along. Maybe I should have preferred Suspicions as then my sleuthing would have been at the same pace as Mr Whicher himself.
Suspicions was broader in scope than With Red Hands as it gave a lot of Mr Whicher's back story and that of the development of the detective wing of the Met which was taking place at the time of the murder. I did enjoy and find this aspect interesting.
I found that With Red Hands gave a more detailed account of the crime, witnesses, trial and evidence (lost or otherwise). There were some details that I read here that were hardly covered in Suspicions, which, because of the order I read them in, made me feel that I had enjoyed With Red Hands more. Maybe these details were left out because with time since the event they have been discredited.
The time since the event, and between the two books, allowed Suspicions to include more recent research, especially around the fate of the Kent family post-conviction. It followed the siblings to Australia and had detail and a range of evidence about their activities there.
Overall I think that The Suspicions of Mr Whicher was a lighter, more diverse read, but that Saint - With Red Hands gave a more detailed case file.