Brilliant. 5 stars.
I just finished this nonfiction book, which I found truly remarkable for its depth and range of research and for its persuasive argument about the ways that (British) Victorian popular literature, stage productions, newspapers, and ephemera such as music hall songs and cartoons discursively produced murder and modern crime. (See all my nerdy tabs? You should see how many passages I underlined.)
Dense with accounts and anecdotes of policing, crime, murder, hangings, trials, medical procedures, and legal processes, and told in accessible, engaging prose, this book is rich with lore. I would strongly recommend this book, along with Haia Shpayer-Makov's THE ASCENT OF THE DETECTIVE (a nice counterpoint to this book), to anyone writing mysteries set in nineteenth century Britain. (Donna Leon, whose books are always well researched, loved it too.)
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