The Wicked Boy by Kate Summerscale

The Wicked Boy by Kate Summerscale

Winner of the 2017 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime Book

From the internationally bestselling author, a deeply researched and atmospheric murder mystery of late Victorian-era London

In the summer of 1895, Robert Coombes (age 13) and his brother Nattie (age 12) were seen spending lavishly around the docklands of East London -- for ten days in July, they ate out at coffee houses and took trips to the seaside and the theater. The boys told neighbors they had been left home alone while their mother visited family in Liverpool, but their aunt was suspicious. When she eventually forced the brothers to open the house to her, she found the badly decomposed body of their mother in a bedroom upstairs. Robert and Nattie were arrested for matricide and sent for trial at the Old Bailey.

Robert confessed to having stabbed his mother, but his lawyers argued that he was insane. Nattie struck a plea and gave evidence against his brother. The court heard testimony about Robert's severe headaches, his fascination with violent criminals and his passion for 'penny dreadfuls', the pulp fiction of the day. He seemed to feel no remorse for what he had done, and neither the prosecution nor the defense could find a motive for the murder. The judge sentenced the thirteen-year-old to detention in Broadmoor, the most infamous criminal lunatic asylum in the land. Yet Broadmoor turned out to be the beginning of a new life for Robert--one that would have profoundly shocked anyone who thought they understood the Wicked Boy.

At a time of great tumult and uncertainty, Robert Coombes's case crystallized contemporary anxieties about the education of the working classes, the dangers of pulp fiction, and evolving theories of criminality, childhood, and insanity. With riveting detail and rich atmosphere, Kate Summerscale recreates this terrible crime and its aftermath, uncovering an extraordinary story of man's capacity to overcome the past.

Kate Summerscale, formerly the literary editor of the Daily Telegraph (London), is the author of The Queen of Whale Cay, which won a Somerset Maugham Award and was short-listed for the Whitbread Biography Award. The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, a number one bestseller in the UK, has been translated into more than a dozen languages and won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction and the British Book Awards Book of the Year. The Wicked Boy won the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime. The Haunting of Alma Fielding was short-listed for the Baillie Gifford Prize. Summerscale lives in London.

SKU	Nicht verfügbar
ISBN 13	9780143110460
ISBN 10	0143110462
Titel	The Wicked Boy
Autor	Kate Summerscale
Buchzustand	Nicht verfügbar
Bindungsart	Paperback
Verlag	Penguin Putnam Inc
Erscheinungsjahr	2017-07-04
Seitenanzahl	416
Preise	Winner of Edgar Allan Poe Awards (Fact Crime) 2017
Hinweis auf dem Einband	Die Abbildung des Buches dient nur Illustrationszwecken, die tatsächliche Bindung, das Cover und die Auflage können sich davon unterscheiden.
Hinweis	Nicht verfügbar