fascinating but fragmented in many ways...I listened to this book and reader was not my favorite. Lucy is a marvelous reader. This may be the problem with this book.

I really like Lucy Worsley so it is a shame to give this book such a low review.

I can't give this book more than 2 stars due to it containing at least one inaccuracy. In her chapter dedicated to Agatha Christie, Worsley writes that Agatha and her first husband, Archibald Christie, had two children together, a son and a daughter. This is incorrect, as they only had one child together, a daughter called Rosalind, who was the only child Agatha had in her lifetime. I overlooked this to start with as it may have been an accident when writing, but a further paragraph again describes Agatha as a mother of two. Sadly this incorrect piece of information gives me uncertainty about the accuracy of the rest of the book that I wasn't already previously familiar with.

Aside from the above, I also felt like halfway through the book took a detour. What started off as a tale about murder and the public's obsession with it turned into mini-autobiographies of crime writers and spoilers for all their most famous books (I had to skip quite a bit to avoid having more books that I haven't read spoiled lol). I definitely lost interest towards the end and felt like the book ended in a place entirely different from where it began.

This isn’t quite as good as the Judith Flanders book which Worsley does draw on. That said, however, it is either a good companion volume or a good place to start depending on which order you are reading them in. In fact, if the Flanders’ book looks too daunting, this one, shorter, is good enough to be read in lieu of.
If you have read the Flanders book, there is supplemental information here, and while Worsley does focus on more of the cases, since she is focusing on fewer, there is more information. There is a little more focus on the impact on literature as well as the view of women. The writing style is engrossing.

Would have given her five stars if she could have admitted she thinks of crime fiction as literature. Since, you know, she wrote an entire book of essays about it.

I love Lucy Worsley - I have watched countless of her excellent documentaries, read few of her books and at least once a week I am listening her podcast "Lady Killers" so this book was really a no brainer for me, I knew it would be something that I will enjoy. Perhaps her particular charm works the best on TV because she is such a joy to watch visually - but at this point I could easily just read her writing and imagine to listen to her voice.

As expected, she is light & breezy (in spite of dark subject) and knows her history - after all, Worsley is historian - and the book is basically a walk trough the centuries of crime fiction. Everything is more or less as expected, except that I was fascinated with a completely off-centre information about puppet theatre:

"The peepshow, or its close companion the puppet show, did not yet have its modern-day connotations of light comedic entertainment for children. Many puppet shows were staged with all the weight and seriousness of tragedy. In fact, this was the medium by which people living in rural England were able to experience the best plays to be seen on the London stage, and the serious, adult-orientated puppet show was a vastly popular form of entertainment.

Puppet performances continued throughout the nineteenth century, until finally brought to a halt by improvements to public transport – once people could travel to their nearest town with ease, they became less interested in having the travelling theatre come to them – as well as the growth of the cinema. The First World War proved the death blow to the old puppet show families. With the young men removed, there was no one to carve the puppets, perform the shows, or drive the van. When puppetry was revived after the war, it returned as much more of an entertainment for children."

Fluffy, enjoyable, didn't really tell me anything new. Just like a cozy mystery.