Ugh I wanted to like this one a lot but it was too dry for how short it was. I also really didn’t like how the narrative was organized.

It definitely doesn’t deliver on its “here’s a crime that was inspired by a book” hype, since the book that allegedly inspired the crime has languished in obscurity and modern audiences have little to no knowledge of the contents of the book other than what the author of THIS book tells us. If the crime had been inspired by a Dickens novel, it would be a different story. As it is, the author of this book has had to force in a lot of references to authors of the time that are still known today so that the reader has something to clutch at for their understanding.

I think this would have been better presented as a case study in a bigger book about times historically where people have directly claimed that they were inspired by a book to commit some action.