The Wicked Boy: Shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction 2017

by Kate Summerscale

Shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction 2017

Early in the morning of Monday 8 July 1895, thirteen-year-old Robert Coombes and his twelve-year-old brother Nattie set out from their small, yellow-brick terraced house in East London to watch a cricket match at Lord’s. Their father had gone to sea the previous Friday, the boys told their neighbours, and their mother was visiting her family in Liverpool. Over the next ten days Robert and Nattie spent extravagantly, pawning their parents’ valuables to fund trips to the theatre and the seaside. But as the sun beat down on the Coombes house, a strange smell began to emanate from the building.

When the police were finally called to investigate, the discovery they made sent the press into a frenzy of horror and alarm, and Robert and Nattie were swept up in a criminal trial that echoed the outrageous plots of the ‘penny dreadful’ novels that Robert loved to read.

In The Wicked Boy, Kate Summerscale has uncovered a fascinating true story of murder and morality – it is not just a meticulous examination of a shocking Victorian case, but also a compelling account of its aftermath, and of man’s capacity to overcome the past.

• ISBN10: 1408851148
• ISBN13: 9781408851142
• Publish Date: 5 May 2016
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 3 March 2021
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 400
• Language: English

Reviews

[wyvernfriend]

Interesting story but I wasn't caught by the storytelling.

Starts in the Victorian era, when a boy of 13, Robert Coombes and his 12 year old brother Nattie have 10 days of freedom until the smell from their house causes someone to investigate only to find that their mother is dead, their father is off at sea and they have recruited a family friend to help take care of them.

When the mother's body is examined they discover that she has been stabbed and Robert admits that he's the one who did it. The trial ends with him in Broadmoor, convicted. After many years he's declared sane and discharged and he goes to Australia. Then he enlists and becomes a stretcher bearer and musician for the Australian Army and lives into old age, showing compassion to a young boy who is beaten by his father, becoming a read father to him.

It's an interesting story of redemption and complicated life that made me think, though the writing style somehow left me cold.