A brilliant piece of literary detective work.' - Evening Standard (UK) 'A remarkable story which Harman draws so skillfully. By exploring concerns about the glorification of criminals in the fiction of the day and addressing some lingering mysteries, such as whether Courvoisier had an accomplice, Harman adds depth to a fascinating true crime narrative.' - Publishers Weekly Lovers of Drood, Sherlock, Jack the Ripper, and their kin real and fictional will relish the gruesome details of this entertaining book.' - Kirkus It is superbly researched, vividly written, and captivating from first to last. Murder By the Book combines this thrilling true-crime story with an illuminating account of the rise of the novel form and the battle for its early soul among the most famous writers of the time.

When Lord William's murderer finally confessed his guilt, he would cite this novel in his defense. One such phenomenon was William Harrison Ainsworth's Jack Sheppard, the story of an unrepentant criminal who escaped the gallows time and again. The best-selling titles were the most sensational true-crime stories.Įven Dickens and Thackeray, both at the beginning of their careers, fell under the spell of these tales - Dickens publicly admiring them, Thackeray rejecting them. In the years just before the murder, new printing methods had made books cheap and abundant, the novel form was on the rise, and suddenly everyone was reading. The missing clue, it turned out, lay in the unlikeliest place: what Courvoisier had been reading. The police suspected Russell's valet, Courvoisier, but the evidence was weak. The brutal murder had the whole city talking. In May 1840, Lord William Russell, well known in London's highest social circles, was found with his throat cut. The fascinating, little-known story of a Victorian-era murder that rocked literary London, leading Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, and Queen Victoria herself to wonder: Can a novel kill?

Murder by the book by claire harman