Early one morning in London a footman answered the door to a panicked maid. Her master, Lord William Russell, had been murdered in a sensational way and this led to a hunt for the killer involving the newly formed Scotland Yard. When a man was arrested it seemed that the case was over and done but the latest fashion was for true-life crime and the when the perpetrator was revealed to have an obsession with a popular crime novel and play then the media went into a frenzy.
Although the murder of Lord William Russell is almost forgotten now it does shed a light on the involvement of the media in crime reporting and sensationalist fictionalised accounts. To the early Victorians the fact that the murder was a foreigner was one thing, that is was a servant meant that the aristocracy slept a little less easy in their beds. This is an entertaining read.

3.25 stars

Fun, but rather fluffier than my preferred flavor of historical crime non-fiction. The speculation in the postscript is interesting, but leaves the reader with far more questions than answers, which is a mildly frustrating way to end a book like this.

This is a true crime novel focusing on the death of Lord William Russell. There's an interesting thread about whether media can lead to real life crime, something still in discussion today with violence and computer games. 

It's a short book so I think there is scope to really dig deeper into this element. There were a lot of characters in this book which I found hard to follow. It's not a bad book but I think just not one for me. 

Mildly intriguing in the first third, dull and forced in the middle third, and an engaging and quick read in the last third.
To be frank, the entire chapter about Dickens, Ainsworth and company could have been left out and the reader would still have understood the influence of literary style at the time and the potential role it played in the murder.
This book was clearly well-researched and the chapters on the aftermath and unanswered questions were a good end to the story.