"How 'the British Enjoyed and Consumed the Idea of Murder'"

"Worsley traces the written coverage of crime from the broadsides and Penny Bloods of the early 19th century through the growing market for detective and horror novels of a later era. In a time of low literacy and high poverty, 'patterers' would stand on street corners and read broadsides that reported crimes, usually with a fine disregard for the facts. Many patterers would act out the drama—the better the acting, the bigger the audience and the sales. As literacy increased, the broadsides turned into articles in the first widely sold newspapers. Novelists also started catering to the public appetite for mayhem. After Scotland Yard's detective branch was established, readers developed 'detective fever': Thousands of people wrote in to present their own theories about various murders, and the detectives were required to read and annotate them all."


Sara Paretsky in The New York Times reviews Lucy Worsley's The Art of the English Murder.