The Art of the English Murder: From Jack the Ripper and Sherlock Holmes to Agatha Christie and Alfred Hitchcock

Narrator Flosnik delivers a competent but rather bland reading of Worsley’s chronicle of the fascination with murder in British popular culture in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The desire for reality drama is not something that was introduced by today’s TV; the book takes listeners back to the 19th century, when the English populace was held in thrall by tales of real-life killings, thievery, and general criminal mischief, as well as the consequences for the perpetrators. Public hangings pulled in huge crowds of people looking to see end-of-the-rope justice. This curiosity eventually gave rise to crime in literature and plays, from penny dreadfuls and pulp to modern day mystery novels. Worsley deftly expounds upon all aspects of crime and punishment with an enthusiastic scholar-of-the-people delivery. However, Flosnik’s presentation is more perfunctory. She keeps her reading straightforward with little emotional inflection. She certainly has an excellent professional reading voice. Her intonation is perfect, but she lacks personality, and consequently the text is never really brought to life. [em]A Pegasus Crime hardcover. (Oct.) [/em]