Taylor’s Reviews > The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime > Status Update

Made it to cinema and the origins of Sherlock Holmes' curved pipe. And the murder of Breezy Bill Terriss. The next chapter is 58 pages, hoo boy...

Bartlett's case is fascinatingly bizarre, and at the three hundred page count, we are finally introduced to the meeting of John Watson and Sherlock Holmes. Honestly, for as dense in references and footnotes as this tome is (and a tome it only can be, at near 500 pages), it's a fantastic, sometimes dryly witty read. So far a great investment.

A hundred and forty pages in. I have finally hit chapter 4. Four. Holy shit this book is dense, I love it.

Lord, there were a lot of plays about murderers and melodramas about killers. Lol I respect the hustle, but have some respect, damn.

The Greenacre spectacle is WILD, man. And we don't crown Queen Victoria until the last sentence of the chapter!

The new police's uniforms had been carefully chosen to indicate their professionalism, while at the same time .... to reassure the population that, unlike the red-coated army, this was a civil, not a military force. (Not that the new color choice made much difference: the police were quickly dubbed 'raw lobsters' or 'the unboiled'... Thus a policeman was only 'hot water' away from being a soldier.)

The SHADE.

Absolutely fascinated with the prospect of "for profit" murder entertainment. You can definitely see the origins of our human fascination with death and violence and justice, and as a true crime podcast listener and avid mystery reader, I'm very invested so far, but god DAYUM this book is dense. I'm taking it slow, really digesting what I read.