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.