I was intrigued by the blurb. Read the preview on Scribd, liked it enough to pay a credit for it, whizzed through the first third - very interesting! Ohhhh, was it the governess? The parents? The step-siblings? An outside party with a grudge against the unlikable master of the house?! - and then slowed in the second third - rehashing the evidence, why do we need full excerpts in the original Victorian language of the trial? Recounting the fall out of the trial in pop culture of the time, oh, and Mr. Whicher's life sucks but hey, let's throw in side stories, although they were kind of interesting peeks into contemporary life - and the last third just dragged and dragged.
The person we thought did it, well, did it. Maybe. Some nice, twisted speculation at the end there. A lengthy epilogue of sorts for the family and what happened to them. The cultural fascination with the detective genre grew and expanded after the murder mystery occurred.
I liked the linguistic nuggets of trivia, found the unedited transcripts of the trial to be padding for length, and would have preferred less redundant recaps every five to ten pages, but, eh, wasn't a bad read overall.
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